Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
vi
The New Science of Super Awareness is truly a must read for anyone
who wants to change anything in his or her life. If you want to
create having it all, read this book. Bill Harris truly is a master
teacher and his new book truly is a gift.
Christy Whitman,
New York Times Bestselling author
www.christywhitman.com
Bill Harris was an ordinary Joe who figured out the secrets to being
happy and successful in life. In this highly prescriptive and engaging
book he shares his simple and effective steps to an extraordinary
life. This is the book I wish I had read forty years ago!
Arielle Ford,
Author, The Soulmate Secret
vii
Bill, thank you for your advice. I must tell you that this subject has
always fascinated me and I feel so grateful to you for sharing this
information as a gift to humanity, Thank you so much. I appreciate
your hard work and studies over the years. My deep regards.
Don Miguel Ruiz,
Author of The Four Agreements and other books
Take a ride inside your brain with an explorer who knows the
territory. Youll improve your willpower, happiness, creativity,
motivation, learn how to get into flow states, improve your
emotional resilience, and a lot more. Get The New Science of Super
Awareness and read it. You wont be disappointed.
Mike Koenigs,
8-time #1 bestselling author and CEO of Mixiv.com
Bill is living breathing proof of what you can achieve when you join
the top 1% of the super-aware. The New Science of Super Awareness
will stretch your mind far past anything you believe youre capable
of. Its the how to of happiness, flow, and abundanceand a
shortcut to your limitless potential.
Alexandra Cattoni,
Online entrepreneur
viii
ix
THE NEW
SCIENCE OF
SUPER
AWARENESS
How Changing Your Brain Can Create Astonishing
Levels of Awareness, Willpower, Happiness,
Emotional R`esilience, Creativity, Motivation,
Flow and Focused Achievement
BILL HARRIS
Centerpointe Press,
Beaverton Oregon
Disclaimer
None of the information contained in this book should be construed as a
claim or representation that Holosync audio technology, or any other products, services, or advice of Centerpointe Research Institute are intended for
use in the diagnosis, cure, treatment, or prevention of disease or any other
medical condition. In dealing with any medical or mental health condition,
always consult a physician or mental health professional.
ISBN-10: 0-9721780-0-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-9721780-0-6
Copyright 2015 Centerpointe Research Institute
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission of Centerpointe Research Institute.
Printed in the United States of America.
The Holosync Solution, Holosync, Autofonix, and Life
Principles Integration Process are registered
trademarks of Centerpointe Research Institute, Inc.
For information write to:
Centerpointe Research Institute
1600 NW 167th Place, Suite 320
Beaverton, Oregon 97006
ph. 503.672.7117
fx. 503.643.3114
support@centerpointe.com
www.centerpointe.com
xii
Table of Contents
Part One: Awareness Creates Choice
xix
Introduction 1
My Promise
5
My Lack of Awareness
9
Master This and Life Becomes Easy
19
The Four Things You Could Have a Choice About
25
Autopilot or Awareness?
33
What Awareness Did For Me
37
If You Had Enough Awareness
43
Its As Simple As That
51
Part Two: How to Get All the Awareness You Need
Meditation: From Weird to Wonderful
Brain Waves 101
Your Wonderful, Changeable Brain
The Wonderful World of Flow
Flow, Flow, Flow Your Boat...
Betcha cant eat just one!
Foiling the Dopamine Devil on Your Shoulder
Zing Went the Strings of My Heart
55
57
71
89
99
113
129
137
147
159
161
171
183
189
197
207
213
223
241
Appendices 247
Appendix One: Meet Three Long-time Holosync Users
247
Appendix Two: Many, many Holosync endorsers
277
Appendix Three: Lots of letters
289
PART ONE:
INTRODUCTION
My hope is that youll do more than just read this book, say, Wow,
great book, add it to your book collection, and move on. If you use
what Ill share here, your life will change in remarkable ways. Youll
find out for yourself what super-awareness is all about, and what it
will do for you.
Based on my experience with over two million people whove already
tried these tools and strategies, Im confident that they will change
your lifeif you use them.
Thats why, throughout the book, Ive added links to free training
videos, web pages with more useful free content, and opportunities
to sample some of the tools and courses Ive createdwhich, Im
proud to say, have changed the lives of millions of people over the
last quarter of a century.
Who this book is for:
I wrote this book for the thoughtful people of this world who seek to be
better human beingsto be more aware, more compassionate, more
clear-minded, and more effective. If you want more choice about how
you feel, how you behave, which people and situations you attract or
become attracted to, and what meanings you assign to what happens
around youand you want to use that choice to improve your life
and the lives of those you love, and make a difference in the world
this book is for you.
Ive designed this book to create ah-has that will help you create
your life in an entirely new, more purposeful, and more effective
way. This book is about taking key aspects of your life off autopilot
(where sometimes you get what you want, and sometimes you dont)
and making them into a choice.
CHAPTER ONE
MY PROMISE
about how you can change your lifeemotionally, mentally, spiritually, and even physically.
Ill draw on cutting edge information from contemporary brain
science and modern cognitive psychology, my own experience, and
what Ive learned from
...some of the most accomplished, most
aware meditators in the world.
What we now know about the brain and how to improve its function
is truly astounding. My good friend Dr. Daniel Amen published a
book many years ago called Change Your Brain, Change Your Life.
Daniel was absolutely right. When you change your brain you WILL
change your life, and in this book Ill show you a number of cutting
edge methods for changing your brain (including an amazing tool Ive
created) that will give you tremendous clarity of mind, more creativity,
greater learning ability, calming emotional equanimity, and
...many other highly sought-after
abilities and qualities.
Ill show you how your emotions and other internal states could
be a choiceallowing you to choose more happiness, confidence,
motivation, persistence, peace of mind, joy, courage, compassion,
resilience, ability to focus, and many other positive stateswhile
experiencing less sadness, anger, anxiety, fear, confusion, depression,
procrastination, and other negative states and emotions.
Sound good? Believe me, this is possible.
With the information and tools Ill share, you can end addictions,
bad habits, procrastination, and other similar problems. Spiritually,
youll learn how changes in your brain can create more connection to
others, put you more in touch with who you really are, allow you to
feel a greater sense of well-being, and feel more comfortable inside
your own skin.
My Promis e
As a result, youll deal much more easily with the stream of problems
and challenges that are
...an unavoidable part
of being human.
Finally, Ill show you how changes in your brain can lower your
stress level, increase your threshold for what you can handle in your
life, improve your physical health, and help eliminate many chronic
health problems.
These changes typically lead to other significant quality-of-life
improvements: better relationships, more self confidence, greater
self-esteem, healing of past emotional trauma, and an ability to stop
sabotaging yourself
and finally take the steps
that lead to success.
CHAPTER TWO
MY LACK OF AWARENESS
And what I did about it...
10
My L ack of Awareness
I think this will really open your eyes. Then, well dive into the nuts
and bolts and bit by bit it will all make a lot more sense.
Before I share these fundamentals, though, lets take a quick look at
a list of 15 things that I believe everyone wants.
If you had a choice, Im betting that youd choose these 15 things.
And, part of my promise to you is that you can have themif you
do certain things Ill share with you. In fact, its going to be easier
than you think.
So here are 15 things everyone wants:
1. To feel better
2. To behave better
3. To have more closeness, more love
4. To have more mental clarity, to make better decisions
5. To have more happiness
6. To feel more security, more inner peace
7. To be healthier, to live longer
8. To have financial security, to make more money
9. To have a labor of love
10. To have doable challenges
11. To understand people better
12. To be understood by others
13. To be more persuasive
14. To make a difference
15. To experience a sense of spiritual connection
When I made this list, I realized that I started out having almost none
of them. As a result of practicing what Im going to share with you,
though, I now have them all.
Im not saying that I dont have problems anymoreI have plenty of
them, just as you probably do. My ability to handle these problems,
11
12
My L ack of Awareness
13
Even with all these attempts to get my life together, I was still unhappy.
But I kept going because I didnt feel like I had a choice.
It was either keep going, give up and
live in misery, or just end it all.
Maybe your life has been, in some ways, similar to mine. Perhaps
not. I dont know. Even if your life has been pretty good so far, and
youve enjoyed a fair amount of success and happiness, what Ill
share will still transform your life, I promise.
But if, like me, you want to get rid of your unhappiness, get past your
confusion about what to do and how to do it, stop repeating the same
mistakes over and over again, stop procrastinating and start taking
action toward what you want, stop getting involved with the same
people who mistreat you and let you down, and feel happier and more
peaceful inside, this book (along with the other free information Im
going to share with you)...
...will be a real turning point in your life.
14
My L ack of Awareness
15
16
My L ack of Awareness
Lots of teachers tell you that mastering your life is easy. Well, it isnt.
At this point, though, after helping many other people make these
sorts of changes, Im confident that I can make it as easy for you as
it can possibly be.
I just need to show you the tools and key principles that allowed me
to change my life and then motivate you to actually use them for
17
yourself. All of this starts in your brain, which can be changed. The
process used to be long and difficult, but now theres an easier, faster
way, and thats what Ill share with you in this book.
If youre willing to follow the same process I followed, your life will
change in remarkable ways, too. In fact, youll quite likely make these
changes faster and more easily than I did, because
Ill take you the direct way, not
the winding way I traveled.
18
CHAPTER THREE
m guessing that you may have already been around the block
a few times in terms of trying to make your life better. You may
have read self help books. You may have been to personal growth
or self improvement seminars.
You may have tried in many ways to get those 15 things I showed
you in Chapter Two.
And, probably some of what youve done has helped. I know these
things helped me when I did them years ago. I wondered, though
(and perhaps youve also wondered), why they didnt work as well
as they were supposed to work.
I believe Ive found the answer to that question.
19
action once you have the how-to, but it also allows you to just plain
feel good, to be more comfortable in your own skin.
...and to be a more loving and compassionate person.
So let me tell you about these fundamentals, because not having your
head around them might just be the missing piece (as it was for me),
and the reason why all the other steps youve taken havent worked
quite as well as youd hoped (or perhaps havent worked at all, in
some cases).
As I explain these fundamentals, and how one leads to the next, until
we finally get to the nuts and bolts (and the opportunity to have those
15 things), I think youll agree that this makes more sense than any
other explanation of the human condition youve heard.
Whats more, its extremely practical, and actually not that difficult
to implement.
It took me quite a while to figure this out, but one of the key insights
Ive hadin fact, THE key insight, I think, is that
Life is all about increasing the
amount of choice you have.
Certainly thats true about your external lifethe more you can
choose where you live, what you do for a living, how much money
you make, who you spend your life with, and so forth, obviously the
more pleasant and fulfilling your life can be.
And though these external choices are important, Im also talking
about choice in another sense. To make it clear exactly what I mean,
lets take a look at three categories:
1. Those things we could have a choice about...
2. Those well never have a choice about, and...
3. Those we can merely influence.
20
First of all, there are many things over which we have absolutely no
choice.
For instance, everything in this world is impermanent, including you.
Every person, situation, or thing eventually comes to an end, goes
away, or falls apart. We have no choice about this, even though it
causes a lot of human suffering. Its built into the universe.
We also have no choice about the weather, earthquakes, the sun,
gravity, that were sensitive and need a certain temperature range or
we cant live, that we need food, water, shelter, love, and so forth.
We also cant do much about what other people do. Have you noticed
that its really hard to get other people to do what you want them to
do? I certainly have. Other people have their own agenda, and that
agenda often gets in the way of your ability to get what you want.
So, when you think about it, there are quite a few things in life over
which you really have no control, no choice. Thats just the way it is.
My suggestion, then, is not to worry about these things
because you cant do anything
about them anyway.
There are, of course, some things that although you cant control
them, you can influence them. You can influence other people by
becoming more persuasive, but this is limited by the fact that there
are so many other people and you dont have access to most of them.
And, many people will be resistant to your influence. After all, they
have their own agenda.
And though you cant do anything about the fact that human bodies
are sensitive and become injured or sick, you can exercise and eat right
to create better health (though youll still eventually get old and die).
You cant change the weather, but you can wear warm clothes when
its cold, or air-condition your home when it gets hot. There are many
things in life you can influence, even though you cant ultimately
21
control them.
Finally, there are some things that you can have a choice about, things
over which you can exercise control.
So, focus on what you can control, influence those things you can
influence, and then
dont worry about those things you
cant do anything about.
This may seem obvious when I say it, but most people arent doing
it, and you probably arent either. I know I wasntuntil I got clear
about how all of this works.
So lets ask the BIG question:
What CAN you have a choice about?
What are the criteria? What determines whether or not you could
have a choice about something?
Interesting question, dont you think?
Ive spent years pondering this question, and heres what Ive come
up with:
You have a choiceor, rather, could have a
choiceabout what YOU create.
You dont create the weather, or gravity, or what the President of the
United States does, or that you need oxygen to stay alive, or the fact
that everything in this universe eventually comes to an endwhich
is why you dont have a choice about those things.
I hope this makes sense to you. You have a choice only about those
things you actually create. Okay, then, what do you create? More
than you think, as well see in just a moment.
But first, theres a second criterion for having a choice: awareness.
22
You can only have a choice about something youre aware of.
In other words, awareness creates choice.
Youre probably saying to yourself right now, What in the world does
he mean by that? Ill explain in a moment, but first, lets answer an
even more fundamental question:
What do I mean by awareness?
And this, my friends, is where it really gets good, so turn the page
and well continue
23
CHAPTER FOUR
25
sible for:
Planning
Self-control and willpower
Complex cognitive behaviors
Personality expression
Decision-making
Regulating social behavior
Before I describe the things you could have a choice about, lets look
at a few examples of how awareness has already created choice for
you. This will allow you to see how basic awareness is to everything
you do.
Once that light bulb goes on, youll more easily see how additional
awareness, directed toward how you create some extremely fundamental aspects of your life, could powerfully change things for
youand give you choices youve probably never dreamed could
be possible.
Im sure youve seen an infant lying on a bed or in a crib. Shes
26
Do you see how this works? Youve already gained choice over what
you look at and how you move, and it was awareness that gave you
that choice. These are simple things, and we take them for granted,
but as youll see, awareness about some other things you create can
really change your life.
27
Our baby has only rudimentary choice over her thoughts, though. As
well see, there are degrees of awareness, and degrees of choice. With
enough choice over your thinkingand over several other things
you can develop an incredible amount
of personal power and effectiveness.
28
The idea of having choice about feelings and other internal states
seems improbable to most people. Thats because they dont have
the awareness to clearly see how possible it really is.
Those who have this kind of awareness do choose their internal state,
and you can, too.
What could you do if your feelings and
other internal states were a choice?
29
You could:
30
Now if you stop and think about each of these, youll see that they
cover a lot of ground. They really do cover everything in life you
could have a choice about. (And, if you had a choice in these four
areas of life your life would be infinitely better!)
Why are these four things potentially a choice? First, because you
create them! They come from something you do. And if, right now,
it doesnt seem that youre creating them
its because youre creating them
automatically, outside your awareness.
These four key areas of life are generated inside of you by an ongoing
stream of internal cognitive processes that ordinarily happen automatically (more about this later). To have choice about them, you have
to create them with awareness. That is, learn to see yourself create
them, as you do it.
As long as you create them outside your awareness, it will seem as
if they just happen.
Now that you know this, you have a decision to make.
Will you create your life on autopilot? Or, with awareness? Turn the
page and well take a look at this intriguing choice
31
32
CHAPTER FIVE
AUTOPILOT OR AWARENESS?
(How To Drop What Isnt Working)
Isnt that how it seems? Something happens, then you feel a certain
way. Your feelings are a response to whatever happens around you.
Lets say you have to give a talk in front of a group of people at work.
When you find out that you have to give the talk you instantly feel a
knot of fear in your stomach. Thinking about giving a speech caused
you to feel afraid.
Heres how it really works, though:
33
do certain things inside your head (you make what cognitive psychologists call internal representationsin this case, of making the
speech), and then you experience an emotion or other internal state.
If the internal representations are of what you want or the positive
possibilities, youll feel some sort of positive feeling. In this case,
though, your internal representations were of something you didnt
want (looking bad, screwing up, or making a fool of yourself), which
inevitably creates some kind of bad feelingin this case, fear.
It seemed like this:
34
When you have enough awareness to observe how you create your life,
youll see exactly how you create bad feelings and less-that-resourceful behaviors (including a failure to act when you know you should).
Youll also seenot know, but actually seehow you attract or
become attracted to the wrong people, or to situations where youre
not likely to get the outcome you want.
And if you have the awareness to see yourself, as you do it, assigning
self-sabotaging meanings to the events of your life (Ill never
succeed, Obviously, no one likes me, Im not smart enough to
do this) those meanings will also become a choice, and
youll drop them if they dont serve you.
You can only feel or do something that doesnt serve you if you
do it outside your awareness. With enough awareness, though, youll
see what youre creating, as you create itand, youll instantly drop
what doesnt serve you.
In fact, with enough awareness youll know just what to do, and
it will become increasingly difficult to feel or do something that
sabotages you.
35
Would you like to know how I found out exactly how this worksand
how it completely changed my life?
Im about to tell you
36
CHAPTER SIX
WHAT AWARENESS
DID FOR ME
(And One Tiny Little Problem)
Id been told to set a goal that was a stretch, yet doable (doable
based on the fact that others were doing it), and I was complying!
Quite frankly, I couldnt even imagine making that much money. As I
typed the words I actually started to shake. Then came this thought
Boy will I look stupid when I cant do this.
37
As the years passed, though, and I learned the strategies Ill share in
this book, things began to change. Finally, something else happened
something that accelerated everything, and totally changed my life:
Based on research I stumbled on from the world-famous Menninger
Clinic and Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York, I create a tool
(Holosync audio technology)
that increased my awareness exponentially.
As it will yours, too, when you try it. (See the link at the end of this
chapter to try a sample of Holosync.)
I began to see myself making certain pictures in my head, along with
the accompanying thoughts. More important, I began to see that it
was what I was doing inside my head that was generating my fearful
38
And, unbelievably, with this awareness the fearful thoughts (and the
behaviors they generated) evaporated!
It also became obvious to me that focusing on what I didnt want was
an automatic, unconscious response that didnt serve me. As I observed
this process, with awareness, as it happened, it became impossible to
keep creating those feelings.
I didnt decide to stop creating the feelingsthey just naturally fell
away because
they didnt serve me.
39
And with this book in your hand, and the other resources Im making
available to you, now you have the opportunity to create the awareness
that will change your life.
Theres one tiny little problem, though, with all this talk about
awareness:
Most people, unfortunately, dont
have that much of it!
On one hand, human beings have more awareness than any other
living creature. Few of them, thoughcertainly less than 1%have
enough awareness to see how theyre creating those four things I
listed earlier:
1. How you feel
2. How you behave
40
41
CHAPTER SEVEN
f you had enough awareness, and you knew how and where
to direct it (so you could see yourself creating those four things,
as you create them) they would become a choice.
Remember, the four things are 1) how you feel, 2) how you behave,
3) which people and situations you attract or become attracted to, and
4) what meanings you assign to what happens.
What would it be like if your feelings and other internal states
were a choice? How often would you choose to feel bad? How often
would you choose to feel afraid, or angry, or confused?
Perhaps sometimes it would serve you to feel bad in some way.
Grieving over a loss is normal, but in this case it would be a choice,
not an automatic response, and when the grief process had run its
course
youd stop.
What about your behavior? If that were a choice, how often would
43
Ill let you in on a little secret. In the personal growth business, its
legendary that people purchase information about how to succeed,
become excited and motivated (for a while), and then never take
action.
How many people buy exercise bicycles and then use them to hang
their clothes on? How many people buy courses and then never do
the lessons? And if they do, how many take the action steps suggested
in the lessons?
Unfortunately, the statistics show that only 2% of people actually
take action on what they want to do. Isnt that amazing? Thats the
price you pay
...for not having enough awareness!
If your behavior was a choice, how often would you act in a way
that you later regret? Would you eat those extra donuts, yell at your
spouse, or watch Keeping Up With the Kardashians instead of
working toward your goals?
The more awareness you have, the more
everything becomes a choiceinstead of
an automatic reaction.
44
When the next woman would come along, she would seem to be
(thankfully, I thought) completely different from my previous
girlfriend. But after several months it would begin to dawn on me
that I was once again with the same woman.
She was just in a different body this time.
How did I do this? How, out of all the women in the world, did I
repeatedly attract and become attracted to women with the issues
that so tragically dovetailed with mine? (I hasten to add that in those
days I was no prize, either!)
Unfortunately, knowing whythough interestingturns out not to
be very helpfulat least in terms of ending the pattern.
What is helpful, though, is seeing yourself
create the attraction, as you do it.
45
46
47
Any way you look at it, increasing your awareness changes your
life in significant and positive ways. I hope by now you can see why
this is so.
My Elevator Speech
48
49
And, by the way, once you have enough awareness the how-to
youve learned from all those books and courses becomes easy to
put into practice.
And if you havent yet read the books and taken the courses, when
you finally do dive into themwith awarenessyoull soak up the
knowledge so easily, and put it into practice so effortlessly
...that youll hardly believe you could have
spent so many years spinning your wheels.
So, lets do a quick review, and then Ill show you how to create all
the awareness you need to transform your life.
This is where it really gets good...
50
CHAPTER EIGHT
51
First, you only have a choice about those things you actually create.
That makes sense, doesnt it?
Second, choice (including choice about how we move, where we
direct our attention, and what we think about) requires awareness.
With enough additional awareness you can have a choice about aspects
of life that usually happen on autopilot.
I hope Ive convinced you that awareness does indeed create choice,
but you may have to experience it yourself before youre really
convinced. Dont worryIve created a simple way for you to do
just that.
To have more choice, you need more awareness.
Its as simple as that.
So, now that youve realized how crucial awareness is, whats
the next question?
Thats right. I knew youd think of it. Youre becoming more aware
already!
The next question is:
Who has this kind of awareness?
(Also, as long as were asking: How did they become so aware? And
how can you do it, too?)
These are the questions well answer in Part Two. Well start by
looking at how the brain creates awareness, and how, by changing
your brain, you can create more of it. And, in the process, create
52
more choice.
Big picture, these changes involve:
More happiness
More inner peace
Fewer negative emotions
Greater resiliency
More willpower
A clearer mind, with better problem solving and decision
making abilities
More creativity
A better memory
A greater sense of well-being
Better health
Less stress
Greater feelings of connection with others.
And, with more awareness youll more easily know what you want
and
...take the steps to make it happen.
In Part Two well look at those rare human beings who have the kind
of super-awareness Ive been describingand discover the method
they used to create it.
Then we can steal their method!
After that, thoughand Im sorry to do thisIm going to pull the
rug out from under you, because unfortunately, as powerful as this
method is, it has one substantial drawback.
Despite that drawback, this method is well worth studying.
Well also look at whats happening in the brain of a super-aware
human being, and how you can create the same changes in your brain.
53
I cant wait to show you how the worlds most aware humans did it.
Please turn the page right now so we can get started
54
PART TWO:
CHAPTER NINE
Now its time to find out how the super-aware got that way.
At the end of Part One, I listed two challenges to gaining choice: 1)
Creating enough awareness, and 2) Knowing where to direct that
awareness. This book is about the first challengehow to create the
super-awareness you need to make the four aspects of life Ive been
talking about into a choice.
Please believe me. You can become
one of the Super-Aware.
Ive done it, and so have many other people whove used the awareness-producing tools Ive created, along with the other strategies Im
57
And finally, of course, youll want to know how you can create those
changes in yourselfso you, too, can become one of the super-aware.
As youll see, its much easier than you might
thinkespecially when you use the tools and
strategies Ill share with you.
58
First, though, I want you to understand the slow and steady traditional
meditation method, how it works, what scientists have learned about
the benefits, and especially
...how meditation changes the brain.
59
60
And for good reason. It turns out theres a lot going on when you
meditate.
Meditators brains have been monitored with electroencephalographs
and spied on with an alphabet soup of brain scanning devices such
as fMRI, SPECT, PET, and others. In doing so, scientists discovered
that meditation has a number of impressive benefits.
In reviews of the literature published in 2006 and 2009, writers
concluded that there are at least three substantiated neurophysiological
effects of meditation:
Increases in alpha and theta brain wave activity
Changes in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the anterior
cingulate cortex
Changes in brain areas related to attention
Andrew Newberg, M.D., who has conducted brain scans on Tibetan
Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns during prayer found that the
frontal part of the brain, usually involved in focused attention and
concentration, is more active during meditation.
Another study of Japanese monks practicing two similar meditation
methodsrepeating a mantra and reciting a Buddhist sutrashowed
increased activity in the cerebral cortex, though in different folds of
the cerebral brain matter for each method.
Lets take a quick survey of other meditation research findings:
Meditation improves physical health
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Neuroscientist Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a top meditation researcher, notes that these and other
changes are a result of the fact that meditation actually changes the
circuitry of the brain.
Heres an interesting example:
Lets say that we need to pay attention to a rapid stream of information. When we spot one of the bits of information were looking for,
something called an attentional blink causes most people to fail to
notice a second bit if it happens a very short time after the first bit.
Lets face it, theres a limit to how much we can take in at any given
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time.
Heres why: A person with average normal awareness uses so much
attention to spot the first bit that theres not enough mental bandwidth
to spot the second one if it comes too soon after the first.
Before the second bit can be noticed, the part of the brain supplying
our paying attention neurotransmitter (norepinephrine)...
...needs a tiny moment to reload.
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After the meditation training, however, brain scans showed that much
less attention (in other words, epinephrine) was needed to notice the
first number, leaving enough attention to allow the meditators to easily
spot the second number.
The brains of these meditators had become more efficient. Meditation
training had changed their brains, increasing their ability to pay
attention and process more information, more quickly.
This is a great example of how super-awareness can be developed
and, of the possibilities of the exciting new field of neuroplasticity.
Until the 1970s, scientists thought the brain could no longer change
after early developmental changes were complete. It was assumed
that once we reach adulthood were stuck with the brain we have.
Today scientists know that your brain is continually changing all
the time in response to experience, movement, sensory impressions,
learning and, in fact, any repeated stimulus.
Meditation just happens to be
a hugely beneficial stimulus!
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Believe me, by changing your brain you, too, can have this kind of
increased awareness, and its well worth having. Increased awareness
has certainly changed my life in remarkable ways, and Ive seen it do
the same for hundreds of thousands of other people all over the world.
Ive mentioned that meditation inhibits, or calms, the sympathetic
nervous system, the part of the brain responsible for the fight or
flight stress response, while enhancing the parasympathetic nervous
system, the part of the brain responsible for
...the opposing relaxation response.
Still other studies show that meditation slows the typical age-related
thinning of the frontal cortex, preventing the supposedly normal
decline in awareness and mental abilities weve been told to expect
as we age.
Im assuming that youd like to avoid this unnecessary loss of
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going to look at the electrical patterns in your brain and the amazing
effect they have on your awareness, and your life.
This, I promise, is one of the most fascinating things youll ever learn.
Lets dive right in
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CHAPTER TEN
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And, these brain wave patterns have a lot to do with the amount of
awareness you have, which, as Ive said, is THE most fundamental
ingredient to creating and exercising choice.
There are four major categories of brain wave patterns (plus a special
fifth brain wave pattern well also look at that really surprised researchers when they found out what highly-prized human characteristic its correlated with).
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The most rapid pattern is called a beta brain wave pattern, the pattern
of normal waking consciousness. Beta waves are those that fluctuate
between 12 and 30 times per second. This means that the wave-form
goes up and down between 12 and 30 times in each second.
Youre probably making mostly beta waves right now. Beta is
associated with concentration, arousal, alertness, and cognition. Its
your normal, daily, going-about-your-business brain wave pattern.
At its highest, most rapid level, though, beta waves are associated
with anxiety, disharmony, and dis-ease. Perhaps slowing yourself
down from these faster beta waveswhich is what happens in
meditationmight be beneficial to you.
That meditation slows brain waves is one reason why meditators are
generally less stressed, have fewer physical symptoms of stress, and
fewer stress-induced medical problems.
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Alpha waves:
Superlearning, Flow States, and Joy
As you become more relaxed your brain waves slow into an alpha
brain wave pattern. Alpha waves fluctuate between 8 and 12 times
per second. The slowest alpha is a state of deep relaxation sometimes
called the twilight state between sleep and waking, that place where...
...youre not quite asleep, but also
not quite awake, either.
At the higher end of alpha youre in a more focused yet still very
relaxed state. When youre absorbed in a good book (or a television
show) and youre so caught up in what youre doing that youve
blocked out awareness of your surroundings, youre probably making
a lot of alpha waves.
This absorption is one aspect of what some people call a flow state,
something well look at in more detail later. (As well see, a flow state
involves an interesting combination of several brain wave patterns
and a fascinating combination of enhancement and suppression of
different parts of the brain.)
Alpha brain waves are also associated with what Bulgarian educator
and psychiatrist Georgi Lozanov called superlearningthe ability
to learn, process, store and recall
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Slower still are theta brain waves and, yes, meditators also make more
theta waves than non-meditators. Theta waves fluctuate between 4 and
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8 times per second, and are best known as the brain wave pattern of
dreaming sleep. When youre dreaming at night, youre making theta
wavesor, if youre having visionary experiences while meditating.
Theta waves are associated with a number of extremely beneficial
states (states of super-awareness more easily accessed by long-time
meditators). One is increased creativity. Researchers have noted that
the more theta waves you make
...the more creative you are.
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The enhanced awareness you experience when you make more theta
brain waves also increases problem solving abilities.
Perhaps you dont have many problems, but I do, and the ability
to easily come up with creative solutionswith difficult people,
in your work, with your finances, in your marriage, or in any other
situationwill significantly change your life, I promise.
With the additional awareness youll experience while making more
theta waves, youll see a problem in a different way. As a result,
youll come up with
...creative, outside the box solutions.
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they easily and naturally choose what serves them in any particular
situation.
Believe me, gaining the ability to make these slower brain wave
patterns will change your life...
..and in ways you cant imagine until
you experience it for yourself.
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The awareness gained in theta also provides relief from past emotional
traumas. Researchers have found that subjects who remembered
traumatic events while making theta waves quite often experienced
a resolution of the trauma.
After such an integrative experience subjects commented that the
past trauma seems as if it happened to someone else.
They remembered the trauma, but
the emotional charge was gone.
Ive had this experience myself while using Holosync, and many
other long-time meditators and Holosync users have told me of
similar experiences.
When were traumatized, we naturally guard against a repeat of
a similar trauma. We see the trauma as a danger to be avoided. If
something reminds us (often outside our awareness) of that trauma,
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we unconsciously recreate the same fear and anxiety and the same
avoidance behaviors as those we experienced during the original
trauma
...even if theres no real danger.
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Slowest of all are delta brain waves. Delta waves fluctuate between 0.1
and 4 cycles per second and are generally associated with dreamless
sleep. Its possible, however, to remain alert in this statea very deep,
trance-like, non-physical state. Making delta waves during meditation
is a quite advanced ability.
Brain wave biofeedback expert Dr. James Hardt, says that in his
experience those who can make large amounts of waking delta
generally have greater leadership abilities, are highly persuasive, and
are often high achievers.
And, for you serious meditation fans, Dr. Hardt has also identified
delta as the brain wave pattern of what Eastern meditation systems
call a kundalini awakening.
Finally, heres one more interesting fact about delta waves:
In certain delta frequencies the brain releases many highly
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(See above) EEG tracings of high amplitude delta brain wave spindles
These brain wave tracings of Bill Harriss brain were made during a 5-day brain wave
biofeedback training conducted by Dr. James Hardt, PhD. According to Dr. Hardt,
such delta spindles are correlated with high levels of persuasiveness, leadership, and
high achievement performance, and also with what are called kundalini awakenings
in Eastern philosophy.
The top two horizontal lines record activity in the left and right occipital areas (back
of the head), the next two record the left and right central areas, the next two the left
and right temporal areas, and the bottom two the left and right frontal areas.
The higher the wave form peaks (the amplitude), the greater the power of the waves
(these delta waves are of very high amplitude). The number of peaks and troughs per
second determines the type of brain wave. Delta waves are those with a frequency
of 4 cycles (peaks) per second or less.
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Weve talked about beta waves, alpha waves, theta waves, and delta
waves. Theres one more brain wave pattern, however, that researchers
are quite excited about:
...gamma brain waves.
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The above one-second interval shows six theta wave peaks, representing an
approximately 6 cycle per second theta brain wave pattern. Embedded in the theta
waves you can see faster gamma waves (between 30 and 50 cycles per second)
which are especially evident on the down-trending side of each wave. This brain
wave configuration typically occurs 0.030 seconds before we have an intuitive,
creative insight.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
YOUR WONDERFUL,
CHANGEABLE BRAIN
Brain synchronization, neuroplasticity...
...and your new Super-Awareness
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Luckily (as Ive been saying) there is a faster and easier way to get
the same results. And though I know Ive been teasing you about this
for some time now, theres a bit more I want you to understand about
the brain before we look at The Holosync Solution.
Then, when I finally describe Holosync and how it works, youll have
the background to fully understand and appreciate what an elegant
solution is really is. So, onward:
Ive already mentioned one of the premises underlying your ability
to create super-awareness:
Your brain is changeable.
If how you feel, think, or act isnt creating the results you want, and
how you feel, think, and act are controlled by your brain (which they
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are) then those responses can be changed. This hopeful news comes
from a relatively new field Ive already mentioned: neuroplasticity.
During most of the twentieth century it was thought that the structure
of your brain was relatively unchangeable after a certain critical period
during childhood. Once you reached adulthood, it was thought, youre
stuck with the brain you have.
But in what may be one of the biggest Wow, were we wrong
moments in scientific history, neuroplasticity researchers have
discovered that the brain isnt hard-wired and unchangeable. Recent
research shows that your brain can and does change in response to
stimulation, experience, learning, movement, and even thinking.
Because of your brains plasticity, you can make fundamental changes
in your brain, and these changes can substantially
...change your experience of life
and the results you create.
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Once this happens, its hard to get out of them and take a different
path down the hill. So in the beginning you have a lot of choice, but
as you develop these ruts it seems as if you have less choice.
In the same way, the brain creates habits and other automatic ways
of doing things. When you were growing up, you figured out ways of
thinking, feeling, and acting that helped you deal with the situations
you confronted, and become the person your parents wanted you to be.
These ways of feeling, thinking, acting, and being created certain
neural connections and pathways in your brain, which then became
habitual and automatic mental rutsso automatic, in fact, that
...they happen outside your awareness.
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But thats just the beginning. In addition to getting rid of the various
ways your mental programming might be sabotaging you, you can
take the next step, and enhance your awareness, increasing your ability
to feel, behave, and create to unheard of levels!
Because of the neuroplasticity of
your brain, all of this is possible!
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Then it begins to look as if how you feel, think, behave, and respond
cant be changed, or at least that changing them would be quite
difficult. You begin to say to yourself, Well, thats the way I am.
Thats who I am. Once you believe thisand everyone does this to
some extentyou actually begin to look for more evidence that youre
right about whatever you believe is (or isnt) possible.
Anything you do over and over, anything you practice repeatedly, or
any stimulus to which youre repeatedly exposed, causes a change in
your brain. More neural real estate is turned over to doing it, thinking
it, believing it, feeling it, or being it.
As a result, a new neural network is created.
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brains of people who dont play the violin eight hours every day.
Think back to Brain Waves 101 now and the amazing qualities
associated with alpha, theta, delta, and gamma brain waves. Because
of neuroplasticity, repeatedly experiencing these more resourceful brain wave patternsby meditating (or, more easily, by using
Holosync) causes you to get better at creating them
...and to get better at creating the amazing qualities
associated with these brain wave patterns.
This involves much more than just creating new mental ruts, new
neural pathways. Because these new pathways are involved in
the most fundamental human abilityawarenessyoure not just
creating new ruts. Youre creating the super-awareness that allows
you to see how your brain creates your experience of life.
And, because awareness creates
choice, youre creating choice about
that experience of life!
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These signals, Kandel found, turn certain genes on and other genes
off. Think about that. You can repeat a thought or action over and
overor create slower, more coherent brain waves day after day
and some of your genes are turned on to make new proteins inside
your brain cells.
This genetic change alters the structure of that cell and changes the
number of connections that cell has with other cells in your brain
...which leads to more awareness, and
more resourceful ways of thinking,
acting, feeling, and being.
You now know a number of things that very few people know. You
know that awareness is the fundamental that drives your experience
of life. You also know that meditation can increase that awareness
(though Ive created a faster way).
You know that your brain will change in response to any repeated
stimuliand that you could, in fact, set out to intentionally change it.
You just need to take the reins and feed it the stimuli that will create
the changes you want.
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Over the last twenty-five years, Ive found that Holosync is by far
the fastest and easiest way to create these changes. But before I tell
you all about Holosync, I have even more super-aware capabilities
I want to tell you about.
Next I want to tell you about one of my favorites: flow states.
Flow is an optimal state of consciousness, a peak state where you
feel your best and perform at your best. When in flow, everything
seems effortless, you know just what to do, and youre firing on all
cylinders.
In fact, psychologists say that those have the most flow in their lives
...are the happiest people on earth!
Turn the page and lets see how you can become one of them
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CHAPTER TWELVE
THE WONDERFUL
WORLD OF FLOW
Some people easily slip into a flow state no matter what theyre doing
while for others the daily tasks of life seem boring, too difficult, or
even anxiety-producing.
I remember working for my fathers company when I was a teenager,
transferring daily sales and expense numbers (from the gasoline
stations he owned) from paper invoices into a bookkeeping ledger.
This was in the 1960s, long before computers made such things easy
and idiot-proof. I had to do it by hand, it had to be 100% accurate
...and it was pure drudgery.
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In fact, it was one of the most boring things Id ever done. Just hearing
me describe it is probably boring. After entering everything, I had
to balance the ledger to make sure Id entered everything accurately.
Embarrassingly, the ledger almost never balancedadding anxiety
to the already crappy feeling of boredom.
Yet many people report entering flow states while performing
similarly mundane tasks. There are even stories about assembly line
workers entering flow states while repeatedly adding a single part to
a product passing by on an assembly line
...over and over, all day.
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Then, creativity takes over. If we also have the expertise and skills
to act resourcefully, and the transient hypofrontality needed for laser
beam focus on the task at hand, every impediment is out of the way
and we...
...fire on all cylinders!
You must, of course, have put in the practice to train your brain to
perform the task. You wont play the saxophone like John Coltrane or
skate like an Olympic champion just because youre in a flow state.
If you have the skills, though, and can turn down certain parts of
your brain, youll get out of your own way and amazing things are
possible. You wont be thinking about thinking, worrying about
whether or not youre doing it right, or trying to think your way
through the next move.
Your implicit system will take over
and it will know just what to do.
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When this part of the brain calms, though, and we stop monitoring
whether or not were doing it right, a flow state is possible. And,
when we stop worrying about whether were doing it right we become
absorbed. We become lost in the activity.
Flow Characteristic #4:
A sense of personal control or agency
over the situation or activity
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doing.
As you act, you feel a sense of personal power. You know that you
have choice. Ironically, though, you also feel as if youre not the doer,
that youre merely a conduit for whatever is happening.
Whatever is happening seems to be happening
through you, rather than because of you.
In a flow state, you lose track of time. Though there are other
variations, time generally seems to either stand still or move quickly.
Time flies when youre having fun, as they say. Youre totally in the
momenta common result of enhanced awareness.
Given that theres actually no moment other than the present
...being in the moment is the essence of
beingand feelingalive.
There are many examples of this in sports, from Babe Ruths statement
that he could see the seams on the baseball as it approached home
plate (in what seemed like slow motion), to Michael Jordans de-
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Though the activity may have a purposeand you may have been
focused on a long term reward when you started the activityby the
time youre fully in flow
...youre doing the activity solely for its own sake.
In a higher more existential sense you might also say that whatever
youre doing has intrinsic meaning for youno matter what it is. The
doing, the being there, in that situation, is meaningful.
This is what people who are depressed or feel hopeless lack. They
dont see any meaning in life.
Can you see how cool this is? Many times we fail to act toward the
outcomes we wantwhether to better our own situation, or to help
someone else
...because we cant quite feel the significance.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
This book, then, is about doing. If you take certain steps, you can
create super-awareness, and with it a whole constellation of abilities
and qualities that will make your life much richer, much easier, much
more rewarding
...and much more fun.
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One sunny spring day I was flying my Socata TBM 850 turbine
airplane, all by myself, over the Rocky Mountains. I was on my
way to a speaking engagement in Denver and I was enjoying the
panoramic view, the solitude, and the feeling of mastery of flying a
complex airplane.
The TBM is a real airplane, made by a French company (the same
company that makes the Airbus). Id purchased it at their factory
at Tarbes, France and flew it back to the United States via Iceland,
Greenland, and northern Canada (another story for another time).
But back to my flight to Denver. I was almost across the Rockies
on that beautiful sunny day when Air Traffic Control told me to
descend from 27,000 feet to 11,000 feet. I put the new altitude into
the computer, pulled back the throttle, and began the descent.
There was a strong tailwind, about 80 knots (92 mph). Not unusual,
nor a big deal. In fact, a tail wind gets you there faster.
Sometimes in such conditions the wind from behind is pushed up the
side of the mountain and, as it flows over the crest of the mountain,
a chaotic up and down wave-like pattern is created called mountain
wave turbulence.
I was about to find out why you dont want this to happen. As I flew
into this violent turbulence, my airplane became like...
...a leaf in the wind!
Powerful forces were trying to push and pull the plane in a dozen
different directions at the same time. In a split second, the left wing
was pointing toward the ground, which is not a good thing. A fraction
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of a second after that, it was pointing at the sky and the right wing
was pointed toward the ground.
The nose was also flailing up and down and from side to side. In fact,
I felt like I was in the middle of a tornado (in a way, I was).
Sometimes airplanes cant withstand these stresses and are torn apart,
which is of course a very bad thing. If this happens the airplane can
no longer fly. Instead
...it falls!
Whats more, if the airspeed falls below whats called the stall speed
(which can happen in such violently turbulent conditions)...
...the airplane also loses
its ability to fly.
I dont really know how long the airplane was pitching up, down,
and sideways like a twig going over a waterfall. It may have been
as little as ten seconds, it might have been as long as thirty seconds.
It seemed like an eternity.
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Time did stand still, believe me. Somehow, though, in all the chaos,
I knew just what to do, and I did it.
In the ten or twenty or thirty seconds the airplane was pitching wildly
I alternately relaxed the yoke (the airplane equivalent of a steering
wheel), turned it to the left, or turned it to the right, as needed, many
times, one movement after another in rapid succession.
None of this involved thinkingthough I may have, during the
first half-second, said to myself Oh, shit! If Id stopped to use my
explicit (linear, rational) system to think through what to do, Im sure
I would have died.
Instead, I was thrown into a flow state. My explicit system went
off-line, every unnecessary brain function was blocked, and my
implicit system figured everything out for me
...microsecond by microsecond.
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Now, with that little story in mind, lets look at the conditions that
allow flow to happen. There are three such conditions:
First, the activity must have a clear goal, a purpose. When the
airplane suddenly started trying to fly in six directions at the same
time, I definitely had a goal: to keep the airplane flying and keep it
from going upside-down and crashing into a mountain!
Second, there must be clear and immediate feedback, allowing
adjustment and improvement of performance moment by moment.
The airplane was giving me constant feedback in each microsecond,
and because of my training (and especially because I was thrown
into a flow state) I was able to take note of that feedback and make
appropriate responses, without thinking about it (there was certainly
no time for thinking).
Had I not entered a flow state there would have been way too much
information to process.
Thirdand this has become one of the most studied aspects of flow
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From left to right along the bottom is the perceived skill level, from
low to high. From bottom to top along the left side you can see
perceived challenge level, from low to high.
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The center of the graph is the point where both challenge and skill
level are average.
Looking at the section marked flow, you can see that flow begins
when both the amount of challenge involved, and the amount of
skill available to meet that challenge, begin to exceed the average.
As challenge and skill increase together, you move toward the upper
right hand corner of the chart.
You can also see that the greatest amount of flow happens...
...when the highest level of challenge is
matched by a similarly high skill level.
Also notice that if challenge is higher than average, but the skill
level isnt high enough, youd experience arousal instead of flow. To
experience flow youd need a higher skill level.
In other words, the brain-changes that turn off the linear-thinking
explicit system, and allow the more automatic, intuitive implicit
system to take over, cant happen if your mind is busy
...trying to meet the challenge
with insufficient skills.
If your skill was even lower (but with the same amount of challenge)
youd feel anxious. There would be a lot more second guessing and
hesitationand less absorption.
If the situation were reversed (the challenge level was lower, perhaps
just a bit above or below average, but your skill level was high) youd
experience a sense of control, but not a flow state.
Youd need more challenge
to push you into flow.
With that same level of challenge, but with a lower skill level, youd
feel worried. And with high skill and a lower than average challenge
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level, you experience relaxation. The task would be a bit too easy.
With low challenge and a closer-to-average skill level, youd feel
bored. And, finally, with an even lower skill level youd feel apathy.
My wild flying event threw me into flow because...
1. The situation was extremely challenging in a way that only
a life-threatening situation can be, and...
2. I fortunately had the skill level required to meet that
challenge (otherwise I would have become quite anxious,
or even panicky).
Without the flow state, I wouldnt have been able to process the rush
of feedback and respond in time to save myself. Because of the flow
state, and the super-awareness it created, I was able to keep up with
the feedback and do what needed to be done.
Theres one trouble with this diagram, though.
It doesnt allow for the fact that when a low skill level is balanced
with a low level of challenge it is possible to enter a flow state. Thats
why Cskszentmihlyi used the terms perceived skill and perceived
challenge.
When learning the fundamentals of a new task, and your skill level
is low, you could still experience a flow state as long as the learning
challenge matches the skill required.
Lets say youre learning keyboard skills by doing simple typing
exercises. If challenge and skill are balanced, you could enter a flow
state. You could become completely absorbed, lose track of time,
find meaning in the activity for its own sake, feel a sense of personal
control, and get lost in the activity.
Of course the greater the challenge and the greater the skill level
required to meet the challenge
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So though the diagram doesnt represent the challenge/skill relationship perfectly, it does emphasize the importance of challenge and skill
level in influencing your ability to enter a flow state.
Its pretty obvious that a too-difficult challenge could frustrate and
create anxiety, and that with more skill, focus and arousal would
increase. Also, that if your skill level was greater than the challenge
...youd be able to relax as you performed the activity.
And, if the task was too easy, youd be bored. So you can see that the
balance between skill and challenge is an important key to accessing
a flow state, and when out of balance you experience one of these
other states.
Daydreaming, focus, flow, and depression.
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The default state, however has its benefits, which some flow state
fans fail to acknowledge. Repeated focus, including the extreme focus
found in flow states, eventually uses up the neurochemical fuel
necessary for flow and its accompanying good feelings.
Just as you cant exercise forever because your body eventually runs
out of fuel, you cant remain in a flow state forever, either. So, you
return to the default mode to renew the necessary neurochemicals.
Thats why we need sleep, and feel renewed after a power nap.
Theres also an interesting relationship between the default mode
and addictive cravings. Addicts who develop lesions in the posterior
cingulate cortexso that it fails to work properly
...lose their cravings!
Flow states not only feel good, they also increase happiness. And,
they allow you to work, focus, and create effortlessly.
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When I met Chicken Soup for the Soul co-author Jack Canfield
many years ago I told him I wanted to speak at one of his seminars.
Youve done this before, I assume, he asked me. Id spoken before
small groups several times, but never to groups as large as those who
attended his seminars.
Of course, I said. No problem.
A couple of months later, there I was in front of 800 people, with my
reputation on the line, with Jack and with the audience. Just as extreme
athletes are thrown into flow states by the intensity of the situations
theyve willingly put themselves into, my speaking to that group
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While I was speaking, it didnt feel like I was doing anything. It felt
like something was happening through me.
Putting myself in a sink-or-swim situation threw me into a flow state,
which allowed me to...
1. Become intensely focused, blocking out all distractions...
2. Easily receive feedback (from my own voice and from
the audience) as I spoke and use that feedback to instantly
generate just the right words, stories, jokes, and the emotional
state that would best communicate my message...
3. Lose my sense of self, so as not to hesitate or second-guess
myself...
4. Feel a sense of effortless control over the situation...
5. Experience time as standing still, so that everything seemed
to be happening in slow motion, giving me plenty of time
to know just what to say and how to say it...
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To create the high skill level needed for challenging situations you
must practice until the fundamental are second nature. My previous
practice and training are a big reason why mountain wave turbulence
over the Rocky Mountains didnt kill me. Without that training
...I probably wouldnt have entered a flow state.
Luckily, you dont have to look death in the eye to create flow. You just
need to stretch beyond your comfort zone. Approaching that attractive
stranger you see across the room, or accepting that promotion you
know you have to grow into just might be enough.
And, wouldnt you know it, an even safer way to develop the ability
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And, of course, as Ive said, theres one big problem with meditation.
Its difficult to learn, and it takes time and persistence to master. Most
people dont stick with it long enough to get the results they want.
My lifes work has centered around developing a way to create the
brain wave patterns of meditation, but without the long learning
curve. Those who use my Holosync audio technology get the same
benefits of meditation
...but in one eighth the time.
I know I keep teasing you, but I have still more to tell you before we
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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After all, as I said in Chapter One, its all about having more choice!
This reward and temptation system is involved whenever were
faced with a decision about whether or not to eat something we know
is unhealthy, will make us fat, or is in some other way harmful to us
(even though it might taste yummy).
Its also involved when we blow off exercising, lose our temper, break
a New Years resolution, procrastinate instead of working toward our
goals, or put off working toward any desired long-term outcome...
...for a perceived short-term pleasure.
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Or, does it motivate you to eat foods that make you fat (or are bad
for you in other ways), spend hours checking Facebook when youd
planned to work on your business, blow off your exercise goals in
favor of something less productive, or spend money you dont have
on something you dont really need?
Make no mistake about it. Dopamine is a powerful drug. Its hard to
resist. Mice who learned to push a lever to get a squirt of dopamine
in their brains were so motivated (driven?) by the dopamine that
they were willing to cross an electrified grid (over and over) to get
to the lever
...until their little feet were
burned to a crisp!
What can we do, then, to avoid being a puppet on a dopamine-driven string? In other words, how do high delayers delay immediate
gratification for longer-term rewards?
Thats what well look at in the next chapter. This is exciting infor-
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mation. Turn the page and Ill tell you all about it
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Yes, we can. So lets see what we can learn from the original preschool
Marshmallow Test participants. Though you should probably use
an adult version of these strategies, its always a great idea to
model the success strategies of otherseven if those we model are
four years old!
Distraction strategies
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In fact, when researchers covered the treats and merely told the
children they were there, the children waited nearly ten times longer
than when they could see the actual treats.
The successful high delayers invented many fun and imaginative distractions. They sang songs. They made funny faces. They picked their
nose or cleaned their ears (and in some cases ate what they found).
They played games with their hands and feet. They tried to sleep.
(Now you see why I suggested that you might want to use an adult
version of their strategies.)
Others talked to themselves, telling themselves to wait so they could
get the extra reward. In other words, they did their best to
...transfer the effects of temptation-creating
dopamine to a later but bigger reward.
Could you use these strategies? Could you move your focus from
a not-so-good-for-you temptation to a more desirable longer-term
reward? Could you decide in advance to change your focus to
something else when you sense a craving for something you know
isnt good for you?
Of course you could. First, though, youd have to want to avoid the
temptation (not a given for many people). How about this, though:
What if you made the whole process easier by...
...increasing your awareness!
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The hot system, by the way, is merely another way to describe the
fight or flight response of the sympathetic nervous system. And, the
cool system is another way of describing the relaxation response
of the parasympathetic nervous system.
The researchers also found a similar relationship between happy and
sad thoughts. Children asked to think about something sad gave in
to temptation as quickly as if theyd focused on the hot, desirable
qualities.
Those who thought about fun things, though
...waited three times as long.
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emotions necessary for survival (fear, anger, hunger, sex, marshmallows, Facebook, etc), though it fulfills other roles unrelated to our
current discussion.
The amygdala, a small almond-shaped organ, is an especially
important part of the limbic system. It plays a key role in sexual and
desire-driven behavior, mobilizing the body to act. However, it has
...no ability whatsoever to reflect
on long term consequences.
Another important finding: stress activates the hot system and makes
the cool system more difficult to access. The more stressed you are,
the more you activate your limbic (fight or flight) system, and the
more likely you are to give in to short-term desires and blow off long
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The cool system is great for future-oriented decisions and self-control. High stress, though, dampens the cool systemwhich is why
whatever we can do to relieve stress (and activate Herbert Bensons
relaxation response)...
...increases the cool systems ability
to operate effectively.
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The cool system and the prefrontal cortex dont fully mature until
your early-to-mid 20s. No wonder you did so many dumb, risky things
when you were young!
These hot and cool systems are polar opposites: As one becomes more
active the other becomes less active. Obviously, for your own sake,
you want to learn how to enhance your cool system so it can more
effectively supervise the hot system.
Luckily, this isnt difficult. Meditation not only enhances the
prefrontal cortex, it also creates more neural connections between
the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex
...allowing that supervision to work better.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
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Heres an interesting way to think about how we deal with the stresses
of life. Every person has an emotional threshold. When life pushes
you beyond that threshold, you feel uneasy, uncomfortableperhaps
even overwhelmed.
Most people respond to being over their threshold with one or more
coping mechanisms: anxiety, anger, depression, sadness, addictive
behaviors (overeating, drugs, alcohol, etc.), and many others.
Imagine youre in a sinking boat (the boat is being overwhelmed with
water). What would you do? Some people bail like crazy. Bailers
frantically try to push the chaos they feel out of their system. They
get angry, cry, yell, exercise compulsively, have sex (etc).
Others try to plug the hole in the bottom of the boat. They hope to
block additional overwhelming input, buying time to dissipate the
chaos. They isolate, shut down, get depressed. They even breathe
less, constrict the pupils of their eyes so as to take in less light, eat
less, and so on.
When you successfully use one of these methods (they do work),
what happens? Thats right.
You save the system from falling apart. Bravo!
Its still the same system, though. The next time its stimulated in the
same way, it again becomes overwhelmed. Rinse and repeat. Most
people repeat this cycle for their entire life: overwhelm save the
systemtemporarily feel betteruntil the next time.
But what if you didnt respond by trying to save the system? What
if, instead, you took steps to raise your threshold for what you can
handle? Then youd have a new system, a new thresholdone that
can handle more.
With a higher threshold, it will take a lot more before you either
...freak out or shut down.
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This variability is a result of a continuous interplay between the sympathetic (fight or flight) branch of the autonomic nervous system,
which speeds the heart up, and the parasympathetic (relaxation
response) branch
...which slows the heart down.
Or, you could say that HRV reflects the degree to which youre able
to resourcefully respond to and recover from life events.
Every person experiences some degree of trauma in their life. Trauma
experienced during childhood generally has a more powerful effect
because children are small and powerless, and have fewer resources
for interpreting or dealing with traumatic events.
In Chapter Three I mentioned three aspects of life over which we
have no control: the physical forces of the universe (gravity, weather,
earthquakes, etc), the agendas of others (which are often at cross-purposes with our own), and the fact that everything in the universe is...
...impermanent.
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Finally, if this doesnt workif were not fast enough to flee or strong
enough to fightwe shift to a shutdown response. (The bailers
in my boat metaphor above were experiencing fight or flight. The
hole-pluggers were experiencing the shutdown response.)
These learned responses from childhood often follow us into
adulthood. Because of the plasticity of our brains, they become
unaware automatic responses to our losses, our setbacks, and...
...our failures to get what we want.
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Instead of flowing with the ups and downs of life, we cling to the
ups, and strongly resist the downs, which, ironically, further lowers
our emotional threshold.
The close relationship between HRV and stress has been researched
extensively by the National Institutes of Health and the American
Heart Association. One hopeful finding is that those with a higher
threshold for stress
...also have high levels of HRV.
And, as I keep saying, the easier, faster, and more effective way to
do that is to use Holosync.
At the end of this chapter Ill give you a link to a wonderful app called
SweetBeat Life that will allow you to measure your HRV, so you can
measure your progress as you increase your awareness!
Holosync (or traditional meditation, though more slowly) increases
activity of the parasympathetic nervous system, while calming the
sympathetic nervous systemwhich increases HRV.
Holosync also enhances the functioning of your prefrontal cortex
(allowing it, among other things, to more easily regulate the impulses
of your limbic system).
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They already knew that Holosync had a positive effect on HRV. They
had proof that Holosync does indeed increase ones threshold. (Boy,
was I relieved.)
Here are three images from the SweetBeat Life app. The first is
from an individual whod never used Holosync, meditating using a
traditional method.
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Notice that the HRV reading maxes out at around 695 (the scores are
circled in all three images).
The next image is that of an intermediate Holosync user while
listening to Holosync.
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As you can see, during this session HRV was more than 5400, almost
eight times higher (a sign of a higher emotional threshold).
The last image is of my own HRV while listening to Holosync.
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The only thing I can take credit for, though, is my persistence in using
Holosync regularly. Holosync truly does allow one to navigate lifes
challenges with more flow and happiness, and theres nothing stopping
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In a Nutshell
Every person has an emotional
threshold
When that threshold is reached
or exceeded, we engage in
dysfunctional coping mechanisms
Chronic stress can lead to serious
health problems: heart disease,
high blood pressure, anxiety,
depression, and other illnesses
HRV is associated with emotional
resilience and nervous system
flexibility
High HRV is an indication of a
healthy, resilient nervous system
one that can cope with a wide
variety of situations
Meditation has been scientifically
proven to reduce stress, anxiety
and emotional well-being
Holosync dramatically accelerates
the benefits of meditation
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PART THREE:
Your Super Highway to Super-Awareness
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE WORLDS
HAPPIEST MAN
eve come a long way, havent we? At this point you know
quite a bit about the brain and how it creates your lifeand,
the possibility of creating brain changes that can
...dramatically improve your life.
I hope you can see now that super-awareness is possible. You really
can
Increase your awareness, creativity, focus and concentration,
pattern recognition, learning ability, memory, and your ability
to solve problems and make better decisions
Slow the aging process
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Increased creativity
Greater learning ability
Increased focus and concentration
Emotional resilience
Peace of mind
Leadership abilities
Confidence
The motivation to act and create what you want
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In Chapter Ten you met Matthieu Ricard, the Tibetan Buddhist monk
often touted as The Worlds Happiest Man, based on his brain scans.
How did Matthieu Ricard create such an amazing brain, and the
super-awareness, equanimity,
happiness, focus, emotional
resilience, and loving kindness
that comes with it?
By meditating for over
50,000 hours!
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But what if someone was in a hurry and wanted to spend just 20 years
creating all those wonderful super-awareness qualities? This more
impatient person would have to meditate for 6 hours and 51 minutes
per day, for twenty years.
Whew! That doesnt leave much time to grab a movie or run the kids
to soccer, does it? Are you willing to do this? Probably not.
To meditate that much youd have to devote your life to meditation,
something few people are willing to do. Matthieu Ricard gave up a
promising career in molecular genetics to focus on meditation, and I
admire him for it. And, Im sure hes quite happy with his choice (he
is, after all, the worlds happiest man).
What he did, though
...isnt very practical for the rest of us.
There are probably others on the short list of the worlds happiest
people who may have meditated for only 20,000 hours, or perhaps
a mere 15,000.
Most people, though, have trouble sticking to meditating for 30
minutes a day for a month! (By the way, if you meditate for 30
minutes a day youll hit 50,000 hours in just under 274 years. If
youre okay with 15,000 hours, at 30 minutes a day you could do it
in a little over 82 years.)
This is why Holosync is such a breakthrough. Besides being easier
(for one thing you skip the long learning curve), our observations of
the more than two million Holosync users over the last 25 years tell
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Prior to Holosync only a tiny number of human beings could ever hope
to gain the super-awareness Ive been describing. Now, however, this
kind of enhanced awarenessand all the benefits associated with it
are available to anyone, and without decades of meditation practice.
So, at long last, lets take a close look at Holosync. Ill start by telling
you how I created it, how and why it works, and how it can greatly
accelerate all the wonderful positive changes Ive been describing.
Turn the page right now so we can keep going
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MODERN TECHNOLOGY
TO THE RESCUE!
told you earlier how I slogged through sixteen years of traditional meditation. Perhaps slogged is an unfair description,
though. Actually, I enjoyed most of it. Im glad I did it
...and it did help.
At the end of those sixteen years, though, I still hadnt made it even
to page 1,000 of the list of the worlds happiest humans.
All I had was an honorable mention
...on the list of those who were
struggling and unhappy.
Then, one sunny Spring day in 1985 (I was 35 years old) I was in
San Francisco visiting a friend Id met at a meditation retreat. I was
just about to head to the airport to fly home when my friend handed
me a cassette tape (this was before CDs were commercially popular)
and said to me
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What the heck, I thought. I grabbed some headphones (Id been told
that headphones were required), popped the cassette in my Walkman
(remember those?), closed my eyes and started to listen.
What happened, I have to admit, was a complete surprise. Even though
it was only ten minutes long, when I finished listening I felt more
peaceful than I usually did, on a really good day, after 45 minutes of
meditationcalm, centered, mentally sharper, and somehow more
in touch with myself.
And, this feeling lingered for hours!
I was intrigued, to say the least.
I contacted the company that had made the cassette. Disappointingly, they didnt seem to know much about the what or why of how it
worked. I did, though, learn enough to start a search through the card
catalog at the library (thats how we did research back in the stone
age, before Al Gore invented the Internet).
Skipping the tedious research process I went through, heres what I
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discovered:
In the 1970s scientists determined that during meditation the electrical
patterns in the brain slowed from the beta brain wave pattern of
normal, everyday alertness and cognition to a more relaxed alpha
patternand, in some cases, to
...an even slower theta brain wave pattern.
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the clarinetists are out of tune with each other you can hear a kind of
wah-wah-wah sound as they try to play the same note, created by
the fact that the two slightly different sound waves
...interfere with each other as they collide in the air.
When our clarinetists finally find the same in-tune pitch, theres no
interference, and the beats disappear.
Doves discovery, though, was little more than a scientific curiosity
until 134 years later when Dr. Gerald Oster, a researcher at Mt. Sinai
Medical Center in New York, published a paper titled Auditory Beats
in the Brain in the October 1973 issue of Scientific American (today
Scientific American is a pop-psychology magazine, but it used to be
a respected scientific journal).
Osters article described what happens when auditory beats are
created in the brain, rather than in the air (as with our clarinetists).
These internally perceived beats are created by pure sine wave tones,
heard through stereo headphones and perceived by two organelles
located on each side of the brain called the olivary nuclei.
The result is a standing auditory wave (not in the air but in the brain)
called a beat pattern, to which the electrical patterns in the brain
move towarda process called
...brain entrainment.
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Then, like a little mad scientist, I set up all this stuff in my basement
and began recording different combinations of pure sine waves tones
onto cassette tapes, based on what Id learned from Dr. Osters paper,
trying to find those that worked the best.
Then, two meditator friends and I got together to try them out.
What happened blew us away. When the tape ended on that first day,
we opened our eyes and looked at each other for about thirty seconds
without saying anything. Finally, one of my friends said
...Are you feeling what Im feeling?
Im feeling great, I said. Calm and kind of high. What about you?
Same here. We didnt know it then, but we were high on our own
feel-good neurochemicalsendorphins, serotonin, GABA (the anti-anxiety molecule), and several others..
We were amazed that we could meditate so deeply just by listening
to sounds on a cassette tape. And, that we could so easily...
...become deeply centered and calm.
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Then you forget about meditating and start thinking about what you
need to get at the store later, what you should have said this morning
to your friend, what you forgot to put on your to-do list, and so on
...but no mystical experiences.
My mind seemed clearer. I could think better. I could also see what
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I didnt know this at the time, but this is what happens when your
prefrontal cortex becomes stronger and can more easily overrule the
reactiveness of your limbic system.
Its what happens when your sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous
system is calmed and your parasympathetic (relaxation response)
nervous system is enhanced.
During the first few years I was using Holosync, I was the conductor
of the University of Portland Orchestrapart of my grad student
duties. One day I was in a deli getting a sandwich to eat in the car
because I was late for a rehearsal.
In fact, I had so many balls in the air that I was zooming from one
thing to the next all day
...and feeling pretty overwhelmed.
I saw someone in the deli whom I hadnt seen for a few years. We
started talking and after a few minutes he said, Wow. You seem so
mellow. What have you been doing?
I seemed mellow to my old friendand on a day when I was hurrying
and stressed!
Believe me, no one had ever described me as mellow before. Intense,
yes. Angry, yes. Occasionally charming, yes. Mellow, no. So I knew
something was changing. For one thing, for the first time since I was
very small
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Looking back, I now know that my brain was changing. New neural
pathways were being created between the two sides of my brain. And
my prefrontal cortexthe part of the brain responsible for awareness
and, yes, mellowness, and creativity, and all the things we discussed in
previous chapterswas grabbing more and more brain real estate
...and using it to create all those qualities and
abilities Ive been describing to you.
And as the months went by, and I continued to use Holosync, the
changes I experienced continued to increase. My mind became more
and more focused. My mental health improved, and then improved
again. I learned things more quickly.
In fact, my mind became a sponge.
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...and so on.
I also received letters from people who said theyd stopped procrastinating and begun taking action, how theyd stopped sabotaging
themselves, how they were now more hopeful about life.
Since this was before the Internet, these were real letters that someone
took the trouble to write, put in an envelope, lick a stamp, and send
by mail. I collected them until there were so many I didnt know what
to do with them all.
Now I wish Id kept all of them, since piling them all in one place
would be pretty impressive.
Later, when most of them were sent by email, I did start collecting
them again, and if you want to read them, theres a link to hundreds
of pages of them in an appendix at the end of this book. They describe
a wide range of problems solved by increased awareness, and I think
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Now, looking back over the last 30 years, its quite clear to me that
Holosync definitely creates all the benefits of traditional meditation.
In fact, as I looked at what Ive shared with you in the last several
chapters I was reminded of
...what Ive been seeing in Holosync users for decades.
Plus, because every time you listen you experience the brainwave
patterns of deeper meditation, you skip the long period of learning
HOW to meditateand start getting the benefits right away.
Half seriously, and half tongue in cheek, we started saying that
Holosync was Instant Meditation, or that Holosync meditates you.
Remembering Matthieu Ricards 50,000 hours of meditation, and
my estimate that one hour of Holosync is worth about eight hours of
traditional meditation, a Holosync meditator meditating one hour a
day can accomplish the equivalent of 50,000 hours in
...about 17 years, instead of 30.
Thats if you meditate one hour a day. I admit that this is still a long
time. Actually, though, many Holosync users become so enthused
about their results that they meditate two hours a day, sometimes
longer. At two hours a day, you and Matthieu Ricard could be
comparing notes in about eight years!
Of course you dont need to equal the worlds happiest man to dra-
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matically change your life. Some of the other monks whose brains
were scanned in the University of Wisconsin-Madison study, had
only 10,000 hours under their belt
...and they were pretty happy, too.
And, of course, they were probably also exhibiting the many other
qualities of super-awareness weve been discussing here.
At any rate, with an hour of Holosync per day youll hit the equivalent
of 10,000 hours in just 3 years and 5 months. And, during that time
youll be experiencing improvements in awareness every day.
Now, personally, I dont really think some raw number of hours is
the most important criteria, but it is an interesting way to illustrate
how dramatically Holosync accelerates the process of increasing
awareness, and experiencing the associated benefits.
People who use Holosync do get all these benefits, and much
more quickly than with traditional meditation. (You can read three
interviews with long-time Holosync users in Appendix One.) Though
everyones different, many people report dramatic improvements in
just weeks or months.
Did I have a big business in mind in these early days? Hardly. My
vision was microscopic. I remember saying to Wes, my partner, Wow.
If I could just make another $30,000 a year, that would double my
income. That would be amazing.
I had no idea that Holosync would become a worldwide phenomenon,
eventually being endorsed by big names like Jack Canfield, co-author
of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books and Stephen Covey, author
of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
...and hundreds upon hundreds of other
teachers, celebrities, and doctors.
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CHAPTER NINETEEN
183
stimulating the two olivary nuclei (in the brainstem) with pure sine
wave auditory tones delivered to each side of the brain through stereo
headphones.
In this type of entrainment, two tones of slightly differing frequencies
(just as with our two clarinetists from the last chapter) interfere with
each other, in this case, inside the brain rather than in the air. This
creates an internal beat pattern at a frequency
...equal to the difference in frequency of the two tones.
Only when both tones are heard at the same time (again, inside your
head) is the beat heard and experienced. Then, your brain waves
entrain to, or move toward, that beat frequency.
Though creating entrainment is a precise and scientific process,
theres also an art to doing it in the most effective way. First, you
must create the desired beat pattern. For any particular beat pattern,
though, there are an infinite number of frequency combinations that
will do the trick
...but they dont all affect the brain in the same way.
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Holosync users, from 193 countries all around the world, who gave
us continuous feedback.)
Next, for best results, the brain wave patterns must be changed at
a certain rate. If we want to create a slower brain wave pattern, we
must begin by entraining something reasonably close to the listeners
current brain waves, and then gradually slow that pattern until we
reach the one were targeting.
If the frequency of the listeners brain waves are too far away from
the desired beat pattern
...entrainment wont happen.
(I have to confess that a pet peeve of mine are the numerous Holosync
knock-offs created by companies who havent done this experimentation and refinement. Because almost any combination of tones creates
something you can feel when you listen, users of these knock-offs
assume that theyre getting the results experienced by Holosync
usersuntil they dont.)
Let me explain a few more reasons why Holosync is so unique (and
effective).
Ive already mentioned the role of the Menninger Foundation in early
meditation research. In the early 1970s researchers at the Menninger
Clinic studied a famous Indian Yogi, Swami Rama. Using various
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186
Well put you in an alpha brain wave pattern and youll experience
superlearning.
Or...
Well put you in a theta state and youll have an out-of-body
experience.
Or whatever.
Earlier I outlined a number of mental abilities associated with certain
brain wave patterns, including enhanced learning abilities, improved
memory, greater creativity, and a few others. And, out-of-body experiences are, I suppose, not only novel and entertaining but also can
cause those who experience them to
...change their perspective on life.
My view of what happens when we expose ourselves to brain entrainment encompasses something much more significant than merely
enhancing mental abilities or having groovy experiences, though.
Whats most important, as Ive endeavored to demonstrate in this
book, is the overall increase in awareness created by
...repeatedly experiencing meditative
brain wave patterns.
The entrainment method Oster describes (especially with the refinements weve added at Centerpointe) creates large fluctuations in
electrical brain wave activity. As one moves from the beta brain wave
pattern of normal waking consciousness, to the slower alpha brain
wave pattern, then deeper into theta, and finally to the deepest delta
...the electrical fluctuations in the
brain are increasing.
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CHAPTER TWENTY
BREAKING UP IS HARD
TO DO
The grim truth about chaos
Of course it does. Mine, too. Everyone feels this way at times. Is this
just bad luck? Crappy planning on the part of the universe?
Or does overwhelmthat feeling that you might fall apartplay a
positive role in life? And, more specifically, could your internal chaos
somehow play a positive role in your quest to create super-awareness?
(Heres a hint: yes.)
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Let me give you an example. Youve probably heard the bible story
of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascusa great example of chaos
leading to a complete transformation (the first person to use this story
as an example of chaos and reorganization, as far as I know, was my
now-deceased friend Michael Hutchinson, author of MegaBrain).
Saul was the Roman equivalent of a bounty hunter. He detested the
Nazarenes, the early Christians. After Jesus death, Saul devoted
himself to hunting down Nazarenes so they could be put to death.
When he ran out of prospects, he asked if he could go outside
Palestine, his usual territory, to Damascus.
On the road to Damascus, though, Saul was struck by a light (however
such a thing happens) so bright that he was blinded. At that moment
he heard
...what he claimed was the voice of God.
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This doesnt feel good. We feel uneasy, anxious. This is, in fact, a
fight or flight moment, sometimes small, sometimes large.
Then, finally, after the ah-ha momentafter the shift, the insight, the
reorganization, or whatever you want to call itthings make sense
again, but
...in a new way that we never
could have imagined before.
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the size and age of the universe. The red light reminds him of
a phenomenon called the red shift. It suddenly hits him that the
expansion of the universe could be determined by measuring shifts
in light frequencies, and he suddenly has
...a brilliant solution to a long-standing problem.
The red light reminds a third person of the dress of the lover who just
left him and he falls into a months-long depression.
Why does a stimulus lead to a higher level of order and complexity
for one person, and to disorder and destruction for another? And why
does the brain need an external stimuli to experience new ideas or
ah-ha moments?
More important to our quest for increased awareness
...could we intentionally trigger ah-ha moments?
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you know what I mean. Work can be transformed into heat. In fact,
chemical, mechanical, thermal, and electrical energy
...can all be converted into each other.
This might seem only mildly exciting to youor perhaps not exciting
at all. I assure you, though, that this little detail has a lot to do with
many of your lifes problemsand the increased awareness that will
solve them. So stay with me.
Scientists noticed something else: A machine, in transforming energy
into work, becomes increasingly disordered. Friction causes the
engines parts to wear out. The connections come loose. The engine
starts to clank as the bolts come loose and the parts stretch.
Unless energy is addedan overhaul, new parts, etc.the machine
eventually becomes a bucket of bolts (which reminds me of a car I
had many years ago).
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This is the $64,000 question, and I promise that the answer will
surprise you. Turn the page, and Ill tell you all about it
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
197
Scientists swept this question under the rug for over a hundred years
after the laws of thermodynamics were formulated. They just didnt
have the mathematical and scientific ability to deal with the infinite
number of variables involved in complex systems.
But Ilya Prigogine and other scientists, using probability theory and
the new field of chaos theory, finally answered this intriguing question.
And, the answer turned out to be a real stunner!
Here is Prigogines Ah-ha!:
Order arises because of chaos, not in spite of it.
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Order O ut of C haos
Open systems adapt. Every day you deal with different sights, sounds,
people, happenings. The weather changes, you eat different foods,
youre confronted with new situations and new information. Most of
the time you go with the flow and easily deal with what happens.
Once in a while, though, its just too much. You feel the chaos. And,
sometimes, if conditions are right, youre transformed by it.
Well see why in just a moment.
Prigogine was studying a chemical process called the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, where four chemicals in a shallow dish at a specific
temperature amazingly self-organize into concentric, spiraling waves,
spreading and pulsing with clock-like regularity and changing colors
at precise intervals (this will not be on the test).
This seemed to contradict the Second Law by spontaneously
decreasing entropy and increasing order.
Ultimately, though, the second law was obeyed, though in a surprising
way: this reaction became more ordered
...by exporting entropy to the surrounding environment!
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Thats why you go into fight or flight when youre pushed over your
threshold. As the entropy builds up, you think youre going to fall
apart!
The more complex an open system is, the more fragile it is (and, the
more dynamic). And, the more entropy it must dissipate to maintain
its structure.
A Ferrari is more complex than a Honda Civic. Its also more fragile
and spends more time in the shop. Its also much more dynamic and
can handle a more varied environment. It corners better, accelerates
better, and so on. It thrives in far-from equilibrium, high-energy,
unstable driving environments.
And, the more aware you become
...the more youll thrive in challenging environments!
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Order O ut of C haos
Up to that point, you easily deal with change. Your spouse wont do
what you want, youre out of eggs, you miss your bus, the power
goes out, you lose your keys, the boss yells at you, whatever. You
deal with it.
Dealing with the events of your day (as well as all your biological
processes) creates entropy, but youre usually able to dissipate it
and maintain your equilibrium. When you reach your threshold,
though, the input is too much. Why? Because youve reached the
point where
...you cant get rid of the entropy fast enough.
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These possibilities are arranged in a bell curve, with the most probable
outcomes in the center and the least probable at the edges. One of
those infinite number of outcomes is the death of the system, but all
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A cell in your body takes in water, nutrients, heat, and so on, while
it gives off waste products and in other ways dissipates entropy. If it
cant dissipate enough entropy to stay a single cell, though, it either
dies or reorganizes at a higher level by going through mitosis (cell
division), becoming two cells.
You may remember from high school biology that during cell division
the cell nucleus goes into chaos temporarily, followed by the division
of the cell into two cellsa perfect example of reorganizing at a
higher level of complexity.
Consider the evolution of scientific thought. The prevailing theories
of science maintain their structure, even as new information is
discovered. At a certain point, though, enough new information comes
to light that the old theories are thrown into doubt. Human thinking
temporarily goes through a period of chaos.
At some point, though, it suddenly reorganizes in a new way
...integrating the new information, and
creating a new paradigm.
When Galileo and Copernicus said that the earth revolved around
the sun instead of the other way around, the church fought these new
ideas for a long time. But as more and more evidence came to light,
the churchs position became increasingly untenable.
Finally a point came where thinking on this subject became increasingly chaotic, until the old way of seeing things broke down
...and was replaced by a new perspective.
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Order O ut of C haos
human functioning.
This process has also happened for you, personally, over and over.
During your life how you see and deal with the world has changed
many times, each new perspective involving greater awareness and
more resourceful ways of seeing things. Each of these approaches to
life worked pretty welluntil they didnt.
At such times, you experienced a period of chaos, where things didnt
make sense in the same way they once haduntil, finally, a new way
of making sense of things replaced the old way.
This happens when we learn to talk, when we start school, when we
go off to college, when we set out to live on our own, when we first
realize were getting old
...and at many other stages of life.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SO WHATS REALLY
FALLING APART?
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S o Whats R e a l ly Fa l ling Ap ar t?
You arent falling apart at all, so you have nothing to worry about.
In fact, you should be shouting from the rooftops
...Hallelujah! A new perspective is coming,
one that will work better!
If you think your idea of who you are IS who you are, and that idea
starts to fall apart, youll frantically try to save it.
But if you know that its just a map, a navigational tooland, in this
case, one that isnt working all that wellyou can just
...stand aside and watch the process.
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S o Whats R e a l ly Fa l ling Ap ar t?
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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE HOLOSYNC
SECRET SAUCE
few chapters ago I described the basics of brain entrainment, at least the way we do it at Centerpointe.
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The stronger your prefrontal cortex, the greater your ability to regulate
fear, anger, anxiety, sadness, limiting beliefs, and other limbic system
responses, allowing you to overrule reactions out of proportion to
the situation.
In this chapter Id like to look at what I think is the most important
innovation weve made at Centerpointe regarding brain entrainment
something called carrier frequency. Carrier frequency is the secret
sauce that allows us to accelerate the process of increasing awareness.
The Holosync stimulus causes your brain to change. To handle the
Holosync stimulus, your brain creates new neural pathways, enhancing
your prefrontal cortex and other areas of the brain associated with
awareness. Your brain experiences the chaos and reorganization
process Ive described in the last few chapters.
Eventually, though, the brain finishes making all the changes it needs
to make to handle the Holosync stimulus. At that point the brain easily
dissipates the necessary entropy to maintain its structure.
This is similar to what happens with a runner whos been running
five miles a day, week after week, until a five mile run is easy. Five
miles no longer pushes the runners body
...to get in better physical condition.
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The effect of that ten cycle per second alpha pattern, though, is not
the same with every pair of tones. It seemed intuitively obvious to
me, however, that the lower the two tones werein other words, the
lower the carrier frequency
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All societies and families teach their children that certain personal
qualities and aspects of being human are bad or inappropriate. When
children exhibit these qualities they receive some sort of negative
reinforcementin some cases mild, and in others quite punitive,
even abusive.
Were all forced to repress some aspects of being human.
Selfishness is a good example. We all go through an early developmental period where were naturally selfish. If we receive enough
negative reinforcement about our natural selfishness during this
period, were forced to repress it. We conclude that selfishness is
...bad, inappropriate, even evil.
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Then, when the nervous system finished making the changes it needed
to make to handle that particular Holosync carrier frequency (which,
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When we did this we noticed, first of all, that the soundtracks felt
powerful again. Whats more, with each lower carrier frequency we
experienced a deepening of our awareness, and
...a whole new set of positive changes.
Then, after six months or so with this lower carrier frequency, the
nervous system would once again come to the point where it had
finished making the changes needed to handle the stronger carrier
frequency. Then wed lower it again.
This process was repeated over and over until, through a number
of stages, wed lowered the carrier frequency as low as we could
possibly goalways, of course, creating the same alpha, theta, and
delta brain wave patterns. In each of these stages we were further
improving our physical health and well-being, our mental abilities,
and our emotional healthall the result of...
...incredible increases in awareness.
There are two ways, then, to stimulate the nervous system to create
more awareness. The first is to slow the brain wave patterns from beta
to alpha to theta, to deltaeach deeper brain wave pattern creating
greater fluctuations in the brain and pushing it to create new neural
pathways and new connections.
And, by experiencing this full range of brain waves over and over,
increasing amounts of brain real estate are allocated to the ability
to create these brain wave patterns
...and the various abilities and qualities
associated with them.
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The second way to change the brain is to lower the carrier frequency
we use to create the alpha, theta, delta brain wave patterns.
Both are necessary. Without the unique ability of Holosync to create
cross-hemispheric communication and brain synchronization, we
couldnt create new neural connections in the brain.
A strong stimulus isnt enough, thoughif it were, wed just bang
on pots and pans to create brain evolution. The stimulus needs to be
of a certain kind, and through nearly three decades of experimentation with over two million Holosync users, weve found the exact
stimulus that creates
...the maximum amount of positive change.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
HOLOSYNC RESEARCH
Most people feel much more relaxed and more focused after listening
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to the demo. Many listeners write expressing surprise that this feeling
stayed with them throughout the entire day. And of course youre
free to listen again, if you want, until you finally decide to give the
full program a try.
The one-year guarantee takes this try before you buy philosophy
even further. It allows you to complete the entire first program level
(Awakening Prologue)and still get a refund
...if you dont agree that Holosync does
everything weve promised.
And, despite this unusually long guarantee period, we have one the
lowest refund rates (possibly THE lowest) in the personal growth field.
Second, the scientific research about the benefits of meditation (only
a small amount of which Ive described in this booksee Chapter
Nine)...
...is voluminous and indisputable.
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Holosy nc R es e arch
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Still, I think these results will impress you. Lets take a look:
Study #1: Holosync and three bio-markers
associated with health and longevity
(study by Dr.Vincent Giampapa)
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Free radicals are atoms or molecules inside cells that have a single
unpaired electron in their outer shell. This allows them to attract and
steal electrons from other atoms or molecules, which damages them
and keeps them from functioning properly. This in turn damages the
cell itself.
In a kind of chain reaction, the damaged molecule then often becomes
a free radical itself, damaging still other molecules, leading to many
serious health problems including cancer, arthritis, atherosclerosis,
Alzheimers disease, and diabetes.
According to what scientists call the free radical theory of aging,
organisms age because cells...
...accumulate free
radical damage over time.
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You can see that these three bio-markers play an important role in
your health. How, then, did Holosync affect these three substances?
Dr. Giampapa tested cortisol, DHEA, and melatonin levels at the
beginning and end of the retreat in 19 Holosync users. Heres what
he found:
In just three days, over 68% had increases in DHEAwith
an average increase of 43.77%.
Cortisol, on the other hand, was down an average of 46.47%.
Melatonin levels increased by a stunning average of 97.77%!
When Dr. Giampapa shared this data with me, he confessed that he
was stunned. These are extremely significant changes, he told me.
Ive never seen anything change these three hormones to this degree.
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What does this mean to you? High cortisol is a bio-marker for stress,
health problems, and accelerated aging. Lowering cortisol levels
lowers stress, increases longevity, and protects against stress-related
health problems.
Increased levels of DHEA are correlated with reduced chances of
heart disease and overall mortality, increased vitality, more robust
health, protection against possible cortisol damage, and better memory
function.
Finally, huge increases in melatonin create better sleep and the
creation of more rejuvenating substances during sleep, more antioxidant protection against free radicals, and a slowing of the aging
process.
Im guessing that youd like to have all of these benefits.
Study #2: Effects of Holosync on Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome
(University of Western Australia in Perth)
As described in the study, standard autogenic relaxation with diaphragmatic breathing was compared with neuro-audio relaxation
training.
The neuro-audio training was a 30-minute Holosync soundtrack,
The Dive, which is part of Awakening Prologue, the initial level
of Holosync. The standard autogenic relaxation method was a
breathing exercise commonly used to create relaxation.
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much difficulty they had thinking clearly, how fatigued they felt, and
whether they experienced unpleasant bodily symptoms.
Study participants were also less focused on their symptoms after
listening to Holosync, but the change didnt reach the level of statistical significance. In other words, there wasnt enough information
to tell for sure whether these improvements were due to Holosync
or just random chance. (Perhaps a study lasting longer than 14 days
would have shown even better results.)
(You probably know what I think, though.)
Heres another comment by one of the researchers in the cover letter
I mentioned above (again I have added my own emphasis):
I supported all the research findings and interpretations in the study with current research - not only
in psychology, but also in the areas of endocrinology, immunology and neurology. I proposed that
[Holosync] binaural-tapes are effective because
they fundamentally modify neurotransmitter
bidirectional communication, thereby interrupting the established psychophysiological habitual
responding (which often manifests as intensified
somatic symptoms and emotional distress (for chronic
fatigue syndrome): thus, the stress-mood-immune
function triad is directly targeted.
Translation: Greater neurotransmitter communication and the interruption of habitual responding is precisely how the greater awareness
Ive been describing happens! Instead of automatic reactions, the
brain is communicating with itself in a way that creates more choice!
Study #3: Holosync and Pre-Operative Anxiety
(Royal Sunderland Hospital, Great Britain)
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to test Holosync against two other commonly used methods of alleviating pre-operative anxiety.
I sent him some Holosync soundtracks to use, but didnt hear from
him again until August of 2005. Heres the letter I received:
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mation I shared in Chapters 20, 21, and 22). I was quite flattered to
discover that the other speakers were medical doctors and researchers
from Oregon Health Sciences University.
After my talk, researchers at the Helfgott Research Institute (part
of the National College of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon)
proposed a study assessing the psychological and physiological
effects of Holosync.
Eight healthy adults participated in the study, listening to The Dive
from Awakening Prologue each day for 14 days, followed by 46
days of daily listening to The Dive followed by another Holosync
soundtrack, Immersion, holding the listener in the delta brain wave
pattern achieved during the last ten minutes of The Dive.
Amazingly, the daily listening compliance was 94%showing,
one might assume, that the participants enjoyed listening to the
soundtrack.
When the data from various blood tests, saliva tests, and several
psychological profiling instruments were examined, the participants
showed significant positive changes in five areas: 1) trait anxiety, 2)
quality of life, 3) levels of mood disturbance, 4) levels of a hormone
called IGF-1, and 5) levels of our old friend dopamine.
Lets look at each of these more closely. First, participants showed a
significant decrease in trait anxiety.
As I described above in my discussion of the Royal Sunderland
Hospital study, trait anxiety is a generalized, chronic feeling of
anxiety, fear, and worry experienced across many situations and
involving an over-focus on potentially threatening stimuli, while state
anxiety is situational anxiety related to a specific anxiety-producing
event.
The researchers described the decreases in anxiety scores in this way:
A decrease in trait anxiety occurred, reflecting an improvement in
the participants perceived reaction and ability to cope with stress
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Nervous outcomes
Trait anxiety
Total absorption
Mood disturbance
Response to stimuli
Tension/anxiety
Vigor
Quality of life
Fatigue
Confusion
Anger/hostility
And all of this was after 60 days of listening! Imagine what happens
after longer meditation practice with Holosync.
Next, in our last chapter, Ill share some final thoughts and tell you
how you can get involved with the Holosync Solution program, whats
included, how we support you as you use it, what the costs are, and
even what the drawbacks might be.
Then, after that final chapter, Ive added three Appendices I think
youll really enjoy.
The first Appendix consists of three conversations with longtime
Holosync users, so you can hear, straight from the horses mouth,
what its like to use Holosync over an extended time. The second lists
the many doctors, therapists, teachers, and spiritual leaders whove
used and endorsed Holosync, and the third will link you to literally
thousands of letters and emails from Holosync users raving about
their results.
Turn the page now for my concluding remarks.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
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The difference in your life when you create these four things with
awareness is
...staggering.
We talked about the worlds happiest man, and how long he had to
meditate to get that wayand why, despite the enormous benefits,
so few people successfully meditate.
Finally, we looked at Holosync, how it works, and how it dramatically
accelerates the meditation process. I explained beat frequencies and
brain entrainment, and my new discovery of the effects of carrier
frequency. I also described the process of chaos and reorganization
how complex systems (including your brain) evolve and grow
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To help you get all these benefits weve been discussing here, weve
created a comprehensive program called The Holosync Solution. I
hope youll give it a try. I know youll be thrilled with the results.
Also, please see the Appendices following this chapter for more information about exactly what its like to be a Holosync user.
I have one final message for you:
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Consider the effect the Dalai Lama has had on the world. Though you
may never become a world leader, you could have a similar effect,
even if its just within your own family, or with the people in your
workplace and other social groups. Though there are many personal
benefits to becoming more aware, the positive effect youll have on
others is equally important.
Please join us in helping to create a more aware world. We certainly
need one.
Finally, thank you for your interest in this information. I certainly
enjoyed gathering it together to share with you. And, I sincerely
mean it when I say that Id like to meet you in person someday. Until
then, we can certainly stay in touch in other ways, especially if you
decide to use Holosync, since we send a continuing stream of new
information to Holosync users.
Id love it if youd post your comments about this book on our
Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/HolosyncMeditationByCenterpointe
I hope what Ive shared here has been helpful to you. Even more, I
hope you have enough awareness envy to use Holosync so you,
too, can become one of the Super-Aware.
Until the next time were together, be well.
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APPENDIX ONE
Deirdre
Recorded June 14, 2010
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life, you just cant imagine not having it. I dont know about other
people, but for me meditation is really important to me now, and this
just makes it so easy. It really goes fast.
I would sooner go without brushing my teeth in the morning than
without meditating. Even when I have to take an early flight or
something, I manage at least to get a partial session in because it is
just really the way the day starts for me.
BH: Do you remember what motivated you to start using Holosync?
Were there problems you had that you wanted to deal with? What
was your motivation?
D: Well, I did have problems, but that wasnt the actual motivation.
Id already tried to meditate numerous times and when I was in a
group it would be okay, but to keep it as a daily habit seemed to be,
well, a kind of torture. I always felt guilty because I was never able
to sustain daily meditation, day in and day out, the way I wanted to.
I was motivated when I first saw the literature from Holosync about
the things it had done for other people, and was pretty sure it would
be good for me. The question was how to do it without it being a
burden, you know? First time I heard the demo, I said, Wow! This is
for me. I just really loved the sound and I knew that they would help
me. I didnt have any idea how much, but I knew they would help.
BH: So, what were some of the first things that happened as you
started to use Holosync that told you something positive was going on?
D: I have to say that I didnt start following the directions to the letter,
Like a lot of people I thought, Ill never find another hour in the day,
so I just said, Well, Ill wake up 15 minutes earlier and listen to half
of the tape still in my bed, which I did for a few days. Then I wanted
to hear the other half, and I found myself sitting up and doing it.
Within a couple of months, I was at the point where I didnt want to
miss it. At the time I was in a very stressful job situation. I felt like
I didnt have any time for myself. I was drinking a little more wine
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going in the right direction. But at the time I didnt know how to get
a handle on the stress.
I think meditation with Holosync has given me a greater capacity to
tune things out. You know that person is there, you know that job is
there, but youre not dealing with those things in this moment and you
learn to focus more on whatever you are dealing with in that moment.
Of course, the worst stresses are usually imaginary. Ive noticed that
almost everything I felt anxiety about worked out fine, and anything
that wasnt fine was stuff I couldnt have predicted anyway. Initially
what meditation with Holosync gave me was that little bubble around
me, when I needed it, to conjure it up and feel protected from stressful
situations.
Not too long after that I found out that my cholesterol was going up. I
was able to just change my lifestyle (and especially what I was eating).
It wasnt that much of a problem. It wasnt a matter of willpower,
it was a matter of focus and I think that the greater focus is a huge
benefit of this kind of meditation.
It is really powerful. So many things work so much faster, and when
youre living in a focused way things are a lot less stressful because
focus means youre really into the present moment, you know, in a
deep way. So all of the imaginary stuff isnt present for you at that
time.
For me, this was a huge gain because before Holosync I was a very
anxious person, especially regarding any kind of job responsibility,
anything concerning other people and obligations to other people.
Im just not that person any more.
BH: It sounds like you were doing what a lot of people do: worry
about the future and look back in the past and regret things that are
already over, and that as you used Holosync you did less of that, and
now youre more in the present moment, and more easily focused on
what you need to do right now.
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D: It was mostly the future, the imminent futurethat was really a big
problem for me. The level of anxiety I was living with constantly looks
absolutely unbearable from a present perspective. Whats amazing
are all the internal changes that Holosync meditation can bring you.
I didnt do anything specifically to make my life less stressful. I just
became less stressed, but along with that I noticed that there were
people who dropped out of my life, and that was a very good thing,
you know. Not having them was a lot less stress. And there was no
animosity, no showdown, no nothing. This just kind of happened as
I became different on the inside.
BH: Whats that like to have all of that anxiety, and all of those people,
gone from your life?
D: Its really nice because it leaves me a lot of time for what I want
to do. It means that my quality of life is much higher than that of
many people around me, and its something that honestly I havent
quite grasped.
It affects me a lot to see so many people suffering so much and you
cant just sit them down and tell them what to do. You try to carry
something with you that gives something to them. Actually, Ive
learned not to try to help people too much. This is one of those things
Ive realized in recent years. There has to be that resonance, I guess.
But, I do try to bring something positive and sometimes people ask
about it, you know.
BH: What kind of feedback have you gotten from family and friends?
Have other people noticed the change in you?
D: Yeah. People notice that Im not rattled easily, that I handle stress
well when other people are freaking out, that I dont seem as stressed
or burdened as I did before. My hairdresser said that even my hair
is different. He said that it was thickereven though Im 10 years
older! Thicker and more curly and more life to it.
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I am now.
BH: Do you remember where in the program you began to get this
really solid feeling of Im okay, other people are okay, the world is
okay, everything is fine? Do you remember about where you were?
D: Yeah, when I started the Purification levels [the 6th through 9th
levels]. Somewhere in the Purification levels things really changed
a lot and by the end of Purification I was much more into this more
solid feeling, sense of self, the universe, and so on. I remember
vaguely a change from the initial Awakening levels [the first 5 levels]
to the Purification levels, which corresponded to cleaning up my life,
basically, and by the end of the Purification levels I was much more
into this sort of well-being thing. I was initially preoccupied with
cleaning a bunch of things up, then it was kind of okay.
BH: A lot of people listening to this are probably in the first few levels
of the program and they may be wondering if its worth it to spend
the money on Holosync, or the time.
D: Well, I can only speak for myself, but I can say that it has saved
me a huge amount of money because my thinking processes are more
clear and more intuitive at the same time. I was able to save big money
on things involving real estate, for example, so that what I spent for
the course pales in comparison.
As for the time commitment, I was very busy at the beginning and
Im still very busy, but now I know too that time, as they say, is
relative, that you save time, you save an enormous amount of time,
if you stick with this because youre doing things in a better way, a
more efficient way. When you have that focus in everything that you
do youve just gained an enormous amount of time. So, on both of
those levels it more than pays for itself.
BH: I really appreciate you taking the time to share all of this.Youre
very articulate and youve painted a really clear picture of what its
been like for you. So, maybe well run into each other in person some
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time and I can thank you in person. Im sure youve helped a lot of
people who are listening to this to better understand what Holosync
is all about. So, any last words before we sign off?
D: I just encourage people to give it a serious try. I think that theyll
be very, very happily surprised by all of the good that it can do them.
So, thank you so much.
BH: Well, thank you, Deirdre. Its been really fun to talk to you. Take
care of yourself.
Terry
Recorded May 26, 2010
Bill Harris: Today Im with Terry, who right now is using one the
last levels of the Holosync program. Terry, what level are you using?
Terry: Im in the second-to-last level, Flowering Level 3. I started
in April of 2004.
BH: When you were starting, when did you first notice that something
positive seemed to be happening?
T: Almost immediately. Id been meditating with TM since 1972, a
couple of hours a day. I felt like Id reached a plateau with my with
TM and tried a few other things in terms of meditation programs. I
just wasnt getting the results that I wanted. I wasnt feeling like I
was going anywhere any more.
I also have some physical problems. I have two major illnesses, polio
and Crohns, and they were both getting worse. I felt like my life was
just spiraling down into a day by day sitting here waiting to die, I
dont know what to do thing.
BH: That doesnt sound good.
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T: No, I was not in good shape at all. Most of my life Id been a fairly
lively, energetic person, but I didnt care anymore. I wasnt suicidal,
but it was just live this out, finish it off, and be done with it.
But, after starting with Holosync, it did stir up some things that I
needed to deal with immediately. Eventually I started reaching those
deeper levels again and finding that peace and joy and quietness inside
and I felt that I was getting my life back.
BH: So, you said that pretty immediately you saw something. What
did you see?
T: I was having deeper meditations with Holosync, quieter
meditations, and just getting much better rest from my meditations,
and they just were much more pleasant than they had been before.
When I first started, I immediately felt, Wow! Im taking off again.
Oh boy, this is going to work, and then all of a sudden - Wham! things would change. Then it was, Oh no! Theres still a lot of stuff
there. I havent worked through it all yet.
BH: You know, thats an interesting observation. As I went through
these levels myself, I was amazed at how many layers and layers and
layers of stuff there were. Ive had so many people come to us whod
been meditating for a long time, two or three decades sometimes, and
whod done lots of personal growth work and were pretty together.
They told me in the beginning, Ive handled all of my emotional
stuff but then found out that there was a lot more that they see when
the additional awareness from Holosync kicks in.
T: Exactly! Im still finding that out, even at the level Im at. Stuff is
still coming out and Im going, Ah ha! I hadnt seen it that way or
Im still getting my ah-ha moments happening now. I figure that may
be a lifelong thing. I dont know. I dont know if that ever stops or not.
BH: There are a lot of things about being human that you cant do
anything about, and those things sometimes look like unresolved stuff
when really youre just experiencing your resistance to something
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T: Thats been the case with me. I can catch myself if something bad
happens and it makes me angry or makes me disgusted or puts me
in some mood that I dont want to be in. I just look inward and just
look around and usually I can fix that within a matter of five to ten
minutes, just by looking around inside and changing a few things.
Its a wonderful, wonderful thing to know that you can do that. It
seems as if were sort prisoners of whatever happens outside of us,
and we dont realize how much control we have in how we process
all of this stuff.
BH: Right. In fact, I like to use the word choice more than control,
because control implies forcing a little bit or using willpower or
something. But if youre aware, you have choice.
T: And awareness is just a key, of course. If somebody tells you, Oh,
just change your thinking, that doesnt do anything. You need the
awareness to go with it so that youre aware of whats happening and
you can make those changes that need to be made.
BH: Right. Change your thinking is sort of a superficial thing. In
fact, most people think that thinking means internal dialog, but it also
includes all of those pictures you make in your head and the sounds
that you hear in your head. All of these help generate how you feel,
how you behave, which people and situations you end up in or you
attract or become attracted to, and what meanings you assign to whats
going on around you. What meanings you assign to whats going on
around you is pretty darned important. I would imagine that before
Holosync the meanings that you assigned to your physical condition
were different than they are now.
T: Quite different. In fact, way back when we had early computers,
I would go on the computer blogs with the Crohns people and we
would do little exercises like, make an image of what your Crohns
looks like to you inside and what its doing. These images were almost
all negative. Nobody saw their condition as being positive. One thing
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thats happened is that I can actually see some positive things that
have come out of my physical condition. And thats just a wonderful
thing because otherwise, if youre living in a state where you hate
your body and you hate your situation, life isnt very much fun!
BH: So, what are some of the benefits youve experienced from
having polio and Crohns?
T: Well, for one, its given me a lot of time to sit. Im on disability so
I have lots of time where Im alone to sit and think. Its also given me
time to find out about myself and what I have control over and what
I dont. We think we control a lot of things, but as you said, theres a
lot of things that come our way that we may not want, but its going
to come our way anyway. We might as well accept it.
My physical roadblocks have given me another level of acceptance. I
try to work with what Ive got. I think its made me a better person. You
use the term threshold quite a bit, and I think it has raised my threshold
a lot. I can tolerate a lot more regarding my physical situation.
BH: You mentioned that Holosync stirred up some stuff for you. What
were some of the things it stirred up?
T: Well, there were some surprises. I thought I was dealing with
my physical situation just fine but Ive found that there was a lot
of negativity there. I really didnt like where I was and I wanted to
change it. I wanted it to change, but I couldnt and it was frustrating.
BH: Yeah. That sounds normal.
T: Now I dont even think about changing it. You get up during the
day and this is your day, you know. If its different, well thats fine.
If I get better, thats fine, but if I dont get better, thats fine too. That
doesnt matter.
BH: It sounds like you became aware of where you were resisting,
and that there was no point in resisting.
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T: Right. And it carries over. I dont want to say that this is just for my
physical stuff, it carries over into the rest of my life, my relationships,
and what Im doing with other people. Im basically a very happy,
laughing, good sense of humor, nice person to be around most of the
time, and a lot of people, just because of the physical things, find that
a little strange. They think I should be grumpy, or whatever. Again,
its the acceptance thing and the awareness thing. Ill go over here
and put my attention and awareness over here where maybe I can do
something with it, maybe be creative.
Ive created a number of stories and poems, essays, etc., about my
Crohns and polio. Thats where I put some of my energy, in writing.
I used to do theater and when I got to the point where I couldnt walk
anymore with the polio and was in the wheelchair, I could no longer
perform, so I wrote two little sketches, comedy sketches that had a
wheelchair person in them, so that I could perform them on stage.
Written just for me. I incorporate what I have into my life and just
use it. I dont see it as a bad thing by any means. I just have to be
creative enough to find how to use it in a sense that somebody else
might find entertaining or enjoy.
BH: So you realize that there was negativity and resistance and that
maybe you were doing your best to put on a happy face about it. You
realized that you didnt really feel that way, so you were able to see
the negativity with awareness and then suddenly it became a choice.
When you have these kinds of choices you always choose what serves
you better, so you chose to reduce that resistance.
T: Yes, and it wasnt something where I was even aware I was making
that choice. Its automatic when you start gaining awareness.
BH: Absolutely. Thats exactly what happens. If you said, someone
told me I need to not resist and you tried to use willpower to do
it, it doesnt work. The change you experienced is something that
follows from seeing something with awareness. You were seeing,
with awareness, something that, for most people, is happening
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unconsciously outside their awareness. To me, thats the real bottomline benefit of Holosyncit makes you more aware. You become
aware of a lot of things that are driving your experience of life, but
that you didnt know were driving your experience of life. Once you
become aware of them they become choices. Thats what changes
your life.
T: I would fully agree that. I guess I used the word control before and
choice is a better word and the choice comes from the awareness. I
feel like I have more choices and more awareness now, even though
I have less mobility and I can do fewer things physically, but I have
more choices because I have more awareness.
BH: Right, exactly. Many Holosync users say that around Purification
Level 1 or 2 they begin to say to themselves, Life is okay. Im
okay. Other people are okay. The world is okay. Its not that they
dont have problems, its just that they arent fighting against their
problems anymore. Did you experience that shift, and was it at about
that same point?
T: Yes. Id say somewhere around there. You cant pinpoint it exactly,
but somewhere around there I wrote somewhere that I no longer
worried about getting to this enlightened place or whatever. I just
live life and enjoy the journey right now. Youre not fighting whats
going on around you anymore. You see it in a whole different way.
Its hard to describe to someone who hasnt experienced it.
BH: Thats the problem with trying to tell someone what its like to
be more aware. Its like telling someone what its like in Mexico if
theyve never been to Mexico. Theres no substitute for experiencing
something for yourself, but luckily theres a fairly easy way for people
to experience increased awareness: use Holosync, as youve done,
and stick with it.
T: For me, it was sort of a reawakening. Id always been a seeker.
You know, doing TM and all of the other workshops, trying to find
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myself and that peace. Of course, I didnt. I got to a point where I got
frustrated. For a while I thought I was making good progress and I
thought that I was on the right road and life is going to be good, and
then things went sour on me. But, when I got to that place again, it
was like a reawakening for me: Oh! Hey! This is going to work, but
at a different level. Actually, its not a different level, its a different
type of awareness than I had before.
BH: Yeah, you were embodying the feeling of it being okay instead
of just knowing it intellectually.
T: Yes. That was a lot of it. Before, it was intellectual. I was plastering
the happy face on top of things. Now I can say, Oh, this awareness
goes all the way down. This is it. This is okay.
BH: Tell me about some of the more difficult times that you had as
you were using Holosync.
T: Well, Im a driven person. Polio people, survivors of polio are
known to be very type-A personality and forceful in things. So when
I started using Holosync and something pushed me over my threshold
and made me uncomfortable, I would resist with every ounce of being
I had because I did not want that change.
I was also, because of my illnesses, seeking safety. To use your term,
Id created an internal map of reality that made me feel safe. When I
started Holosync that map didnt work anymore. That bothered me to
no end because I wanted to feel safe. I didnt feel safe. I was nervous.
I was anxious. I was afraid. It got to the point where I didnt want to
meditate because I knew it was going to push me more and I didnt
want to be pushed anymore.
In the end, of course, I knew somewhere deep down that it was good
for me. I was reading all of your wonderful - by the way, I must throw
this in - all of your wonderful support materials which people need to
look at and read and use, because I never would have gotten through
this without all of that wonderful material.
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BH: One of the problems is that people read the support material
and if something I discuss in there hasnt happened to them yet, it
really doesnt register. Then, if it later happens, they arent likely to
remember that I did talk about it. Because, if you go back, and Im
sure youll probably agree with this, if you go back later and reread
the support letters, you say, I dont remember this being in the
support letters.
T: Actually, everything you need is in the support letters in some way.
But like you say, if we havent had those things come up yet you just
gloss over it and move on to something else and forget about it. You
figure, Well, I read the support letter for this one, so Im done with
that one so Ill move on to the next one. That isnt the way that it
works at all.
BH: Yeah. Thats a very good point.
T: I happen to be a person who likes reading that sort of stuff and I
also love reading your stuff, by the way. I really appreciate what you
put out. It always makes me think and feel things and become aware
of things in a different way. So Ill go back and reread some of your
earlier things and say, Oh! He said that way back then, but I didnt
realize what he was saying at that point.
I find it interesting and encouraging that you continue to have the
ah-has, that those things dont just stop somewhere along the line.
Thats part of life. The awareness grows and we learn more about
ourselves and learn more about how we can do things, and we learn
more about how we can choose to do things. That I can continue to
grow is an exciting thing for me.
BH: Holosync creates a momentum in your growth that continues long
after you stop. It certainly is continuing for me. A lot of people are
concerned that you become dependent on Holosync and if you stop
doing it that somehow something is going to go away. The changes
are permanent and the increases in awareness just keep happening.
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Valerie
Recorded June 1, 2010
Bill: Im here today with Valerie Wilkinson whos using one of the
last levels of the Holosync Solution program and were going to chat
about what thats like and see what happens. So how are you Valerie?
Valerie: Im very fine today. Im living my bliss.
Bill: Well, that sounds positive.
Valerie: Thank you, Holosync!
Bill: Yeah, so what level of the program are you using, or have you
finished?
Valerie: No, in fact I just purchased Flowering Level 2 yesterday, so
Im really in Flowering 1 right now.
Bill: I see, I see, so thatis the 10th level of the program, counting
Awakening Prologue, so youve been doing this for quite a while.
Valerie: Yeah I think since about 2002.
Bill: So about eight years. So you havent been hurrying through it.
Valerie: No, Ive been pacing myself. A lot of the levels I listen to
longer than the minimal time you recommend. I figure it cannot hurt.
Bill: I like to hear that, rather than somebody rushing through it
thinking that if you get to the finish line faster thats better. That
would be sort of like the orchestra trying to play the music really fast
because the idea was to get to the last note as quickly as possible.
Valerie: Exactly. That is a perfect explanation.
Bill: So what led you to use Holosync in the first place?
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Bill: So in the beginning then it sounds like you had a fair amount
of upheaval.
Valerie: Oh yeah.
Bill: Which is the result of resistance. All the stuff weve pushed out
of our awareness comes into our awareness and then, since we dont
like itwhich is why we repressed it in the first placewe then resist
it, which doesnt feel good. So how long did that go on?
Valerie: Well, Awakening Prologue put me in a real high. I felt my
brain was alive. I was reading more. I was reading scientific things,
getting into geology and archeology, things Id never done before.
My brain was craving knowledge. I guess neurons were just creating
all kinds of new connections, you know. Then in Awakening Level 1
and 2 more of the junk started coming up.
Valerie: Because your support pieces were so good I knew this could
happen, so I said, well, lets see where this will go. This whole process
became automatic. It was like brushing my teeth. I put the headphones
on just like I brush my teeth everyday, so whatever happens happens
and, like you said, let anything be okay. When you follow that method
even the upheaval doesnt seem so bad. Even if you have a crying jag
and dont even know why youre crying, or maybe one day you feel
depressed, I knew it was all part of the process and I knew eventually
it would pass and Id feel wonderful. And sure enough, there would
come a day when, though it might happen in the middle of the day
or when I woke up, all of a sudden this peacefulness came upon me
and I felt one step better, if that makes sense.
Bill: I remember going through that exact same thing, where I would
feel better than Id ever felt before. Then more upheaval would happen
and then again it would shift and Id feel still better. Its that chaos and
reorganization that I talk about in the support material. When things
reorganize everything feels completely new and different, and way,
way better. Id say to myself, Oh yes, thank goodness.
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around Purification 1 or 2 [the 6th and 7th levels] they began to say
to themselves. Everything is okay, Im okay, the world is okay,
other people are okay. Not that they were blind to the problems in
the world, but just that there was a sense of things being okay. When
did you come to that kind of feeling?
Valerie: I think it was probably at the end of the Awakening levels
where I actually started feeling that everything is okay. I emailed
somebody in your support department and asked, What am I
supposed to expect from Purification? and they said A little fine
tuning. It is fine tuning. I was feeling more centered and closer to
others, the whole humanity thing. Im in it with everybody else, so if
youre bad, so am I. We are the world, we are the children. Thats what
I got in Purification. I think it started at the end of Awakening, though.
Bill: Have you had changes in mental abilities? Your ability to be
focused and things like that?
Valerie: Absolutely. If you go back to 2002 at my job I was getting
mediocre reviews and people were saying I just wasnt a team player,
blah, blah, blah. A couple years after Holosync, my God, my reviews
went up. I was a team player. They were saying, Val what happened
to you? Its like night and day. Holosync also changed my cognitive
abilities, my writing ability, my reading. I can read faster. I can listen to
music and hear the complex themes in classical music. Its wonderful.
My hearing, my reading, everything has just been heightened.
Bill: Um-hmm.
Valerie: Thats why I want to continue.
Bill: Were the changes in how you look at things what you expected?
Valerie: Beyond my expectations Bill, beyond my expectations. I
would say that the money that I spent on Holosync is probably the
best money I have ever spent in my entire life. Bar none, bar none.
Im grateful to have connected because I found you through a search
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engine, you know? And just clicked into it because of the brainwave
concept and I felt because I had MS and I knew that maybe my brain
was going to atrophy and that this could be one way I would stop
that from happening, and my brain is definitely not atrophying at all.
Bill: So how has this affected your MS?
Valerie: Well, I havent had any issues with MS at all and Im not
on any drugs. I live a lifestyle where I get enough sleep, I eat very
well, I followed the suggestions in your Management of Evolutionary
Change book. I have read that five or six times too.
Bill: I dont know that much about MS. Is your experience with it
different from that of other people that have it? Do you have a doctor
that you see about this?
Valerie: Its different for different people. There are certain people
that go right downhill. I have whats called a relapsing and remitting
type, so I get episodes. The first episode I thought I had a stroke. I
could not talk well. I was like garbling. Then a year later I had another
episode where the right side of my body just died. It was like a dead
weight and I didnt know what I was going to do. Well, at that time
they pumped me up with steroids and then within six weeks I got back
the use of my arm and my leg on the right side, and then they wanted
to put me on drugs and I didnt want to. That was about 2001 and
thats when I started knowing that if I didnt reduce my stress levels I
was going to have another MS attack and I didnt want that to happen.
Bill: But they had diagnosed it at that point as being MS?
Valerie: Oh yeah, it was. It was. And I knew from all the reading I had
done, that cognitive processes are going to go. Ive had three MRIs
and after the third one the doctor told me Yeah we see a little more
inflammation and we want you to get on these drugs. I said, what
does inflammation mean and he says, Thats where if you lose your
axons then youre going to lose something the brain controls. That
could either be language, your learning abilities, or it could be your
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motor skills.
I just didnt want to go on those drugs because they have so many bad
side effects. Thats another reason why I started looking for Holosync.
I should have mentioned that way in the beginning. It wasnt only the
bad boss but also my MS.
Bill: So is there anyway to tell whether Holosync has had a positive
effect on the MS, or could you have stayed in this remission state
anyway?
Valerie: Well, everybody is flabbergasted because I havent had an
episode since 1997.
Bill: Wow.
Valerie: I dont know if I would have gone downhill and had more
episodes if I hadnt started using Holosync. And these neurologists
dont want to get into this with you. Id love to go and talk to my
neurologist about Holosync, but all they want to do is treat the
symptoms and give you a drug.
Bill: Well, if MS progresses more if you are stressed, then I would
think that because Holosync does really raise your threshold for stress
pretty significantly, that might be one way that it would help to keep
it from getting worse.
Valerie: Exactly, exactly.
Bill: Well, it sounds like you have turned into a pretty happy person
as a result of doing this.
Valerie: Like I said, Im living my bliss. I do not have a job, but now
I am retired. I say I am retired, you know. But I am doing what I love.
The world is beautiful. All is right with the world and I have to thank
Holosync for that because I dont get into these pity parties any more
in my brain, you know that negative talk. Im not going to say it is
100% gone, but it is almost all gone.
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APPENDIX TWO
Jack Canfield. co-author, Chicken Soup for the Soul book series,
motivational speaker, success trainer, founder of Transformational
Leadership Council, canfieldtrainings.com
Genpo Roshi, Soto School Zen Master, author, creator of Big Mind
Big Heart
Brendon Burchard, New York Time Bestselling Author, success
trainer
Bob Proctor, esteemed success teacher
Dr. Daniel Amen, The Brain Doctor, noted psychiatrist and brain
scanning expert, author of Change Your Brain Change Your Life and
many other books, star of many PBS programs
Dr. Mark Hyman, physician, New York Times bestselling author,
founder and medical director of the UltraWellness Center, columnist
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numerous books
Chad Tackett, fitness expert, owner, Fast Track to Fat Loss, FitFreeze,
and Global Health & Fitness
Kim Lyons, athlete, personal trainer, nutritionist, fitness model, star
of The Biggest Loser, author of Kim Lyons: Your Body, Your Life
Frank Mangano, author, researcher, health advocate, author of The
60 Day Prescription Free Cholesterol Cure and other books.
Garrett Gunderson, entrepreneur and business coach, creator of
Freedom FastTrack
Gaiam, Inc., leading producer and marketer of lifestyle media and
health and fitness accessories, creators of Gaiam TV, and Gaiam Life
Gary Ryan Blair, goal achievement expert, speaker, coach, President
of The Goals Guy, author of Everything Counts!
Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks, PhDs, relationship experts and
teachers, authors of 35 books including bestseller Conscious Loving,
founder of Spiritual Cinema Circle, frequent guests on Oprah!, CNN,
CNBC, 48 Hours, and others.
Glen and Natalie Ledwell, MindMovies.com
Global Health & Fitness, online fitness programs
GP Walsh, speaker, personal growth teacher, blogger, creator of
Master Heart Institute
Guy Finley, self-realization teacher, author of The Seeker, The Search,
The Sacred, Breaking Dependency, and other books
Hale Dwoskin, creator of The Sedona Method, author of the New
York Times Bestseller, The Sedona Method, featured teacher in The
Secret, faculty member at Esalen and The Omega Institute.
T. Harv Eker, motivational speaker, success teacher, seminar leader,
New York Times bestselling author of The Millionaire Mind and
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SpeedWealth
Harrison Klein, trainer, speaker, creator of Alignment Factor,
Effortless Abundance, and other courses
Health Resources - True Health
Jade Koyle, co-founder, Flow Publishing (helping experts, speakers,
and authors develop new content and take it to market)
Jaki Ives, relationship expert, author of Make Him Fall Madly in Love
Jeff Walker, creator of Product Launch Formula, author of the #1
New York Times Bestseller, Launch: An Internet Millionaires Secret
Formula To Sell Almost Anything Online, Build a Business You Love,
and Live the Life of Your Dreams
Jason Ferrugia, fitness trainer and personal development guru,
founder of Renegade Fitness
Jason Gracia, author, Six-Figure Expert, creator of the Empire
Group
Jennifer McLean, personal growth teacher, creator of Healing With
the Masters series
Jesse Cannone, fitness expert, co-founder of The Healthy Back
Institute, author of The 7-Day Back Pain Cure
Jim Katsoulis, Master Hypnotist, Master Practitioner of NLP, blogger
Jim Kwik, memory, speed reading, and accelerated learning expert,
founder of Kwik Learning, founder and curator of SuperheroYou:
Change Your Brain, Change Your World learning conference
JJ Virgin, celebrity nutrition and fitness expert, author of The Virgin
Diet, The Sugar Impact, and other books.
Joel Chue, feng shui expert, author of Feng Sui Secrets
Joel Marion, fitness coach, personal trainer, Certified Sports
Nutritionist, creator of Body Transformation Insider, contributor to
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Mens Fitness, Muscle Media, Womans day, SELF, Muscle & Fitness
Hers, MuscleMag International, Oxygen, and T-Nation.
John Assaraf, personal growth teacher, featured teacher in The Secret,
CEO of Praxis Now, author of Having It All and The Answer, guest
on Larry King Live, Anderson Cooper 360, and The Ellen Degeneres
Show. Jon Benson
Jon Benson, fitness expert, creator of the Video Sales Letter Formula
Josh Bezoni, nutritionist, fitness and supplement expert, CEO of
BioTrust Nutrition
Karim Hajee, personal growth teacher, creator of the Creating Power
System and Creating Wealth
Keith Scott-Mumby, allergy expert The Worlds Number One
Allergy Detective
Ken Druck, speaker, coach, consultant, internationally recognized
authority on resilience, author of The Real Rules of Life and other
books
Kevin Gianni, health expert, RenegadeHealth.com, Renegade Radio
Kevin Thompson, creator of Automatic Income business creation
system
Kristen Howe, personal growth teacher, Law of Attraction coach
Lily Jensen, founder of Path to Abundance and JustBeWellness.com
Mind Valley, sellers of personal growth products
Larry Ostrovsky, personal growth teacher, author, manager of
Halcyon Publishing
Lee Euler, health writer, creator of Cancer Defeated newsletter
Lewis Howes, author, entrepreneur, former professional football
player, host of popular podcast, The School of Greatness
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APPENDIX THREE
LOTS OF LETTERS
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